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Chapter Text

The problem with realspace, Zhou Zishu lamented to himself as he dragged himself along the barely-paved path that led up the rocky mountain in a winding spiral, is that gravity seems so much more… you know… real. 

His body ached like mending bones everywhere the mods joined with his flesh. His temples were pounding with… oh yeah, dehydration, most likely. He was out of breath, too, though that could be attributed more to the atmosphere than any lack of physical fitness or capability – the mods saw to that, at least. He glanced down at the analytics screen on his wrist piece -– the mods needed to be recharged soon, though, or they’d just be that much more dead weight.  

Fuck, where is that damn hub? 

He didn’t remember Old Man Li’s place being so far up this godforsaken mountain.

Yeah, but last time you were here it didn’t hurt to walk. That makes a difference.

They always said the mods would kill him. At the time they’d seemed worth it – the extra strength, speed, and perception had rendered his meat almost as agile and proficient as his Jianghu avatars. Besides, it’s not like he had ever expected to grow old, not in his line of work. 

They said the mods would kill me, Zhou Zishu bitched to himself, but they never mentioned dying would hurt so bad the whole time.

Finally, right as he was about to concede to his whiny body’s demands to sit and rest for a few minutes, he saw lights peek out from around the bend in the road, and the familiar electric hum of an active Jianghu network hub followed soon after. 

Old Man Li’s wasn’t a nice place, in realspace – the location was too remote to bother. People who came here to plug in were doing it out of necessity, and wouldn’t need fancy frills to entice them inside. There weren’t even any competitors this far out, and with a cornered market the old man's steady stream of business was basically guaranteed. 

Still, he kept his hub clean and neat, stocked with meal replacement packets and even hot food once a day, if that’s what your meat was craving. The cubicles that housed the hub ports weren’t new or elegant, but they were comfortable and quiet, well maintained and monitored like clockwork for malware and other invasive programs. Most importantly, his firewall was state of the art. The man knew what his priorities should be, and Zhou Zishu appreciated a man with good sense. He walked in feeling more cheerful than he had in days.

“Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in today,” Old Man Li greeted him before his eyes had even adjusted to the low interior lights of the lobby, “what brings you all the way out into the wilderness this time, you degenerate hoodlum?”

“Quit my job,” Zhou Zishu smiled without any mirth, “when I found out it was killing me sooner than I expected -- these fuckin' experimental, tactical mods they put on me are shutting down my system. Wanted to take a couple years to see the world, take a final tour of the sights of nature before I decide whether I’m gonna have myself uploaded or just fade out.”

“You got money to be uploaded?” Old Man Li asked, clearly skeptical. That was fair, Zhou Zishu supposed. It’s not like he went out of his way to look like a private landowner, these days. 

“Maybe,” he replied noncommittally, shrugging off any further questions with a dismissive wave of his hand, “but even if I do, it’s not like I have enough for a synth suit. I’d be data-only, so if I want to see what’s left of the world, now’s the time, right?”

Old Man Li laughed, “You got that right, kid. Only the rich and powerful get to be immortal. Good for you, telling the bastards to fuck off. Every man should have some time to call his own, before he goes. Now. What can I do for you today?”

“Water, I think?” Zhou Zishu considered, “and probably a protein pack. A port, of course. You got space overnight? I gotta recharge all this bullshit,” he gestured at the hardware on his temples and collarbones.

Old Man Li laughed. 

“Yeah, kid, I got space. Only one bed occupied today, so you can take your pick – just don’t fuck with the kid if you run into him, okay? He’s having a rough one.” 

Zhou Zishu grunted in assent and made his way back to the hallway where the warm glow and hum of the cubicles was calling out to him like a siren song, promising rest and solace from the harsh, grinding physicality of realspace. Sure enough, only one of the dozen cubicles was occupied, by a dirty little gutter punk, it looked like. The kid was filthy, covered in something that looked like soot. And even with his mind taking a walk through the Jianghu, his body was trembling. ‘Having a rough one,’ seemed like a bit of an understatement.

Sucks to be him, Zhou Zishu shook his head with a mix of sympathy and schadenfreude. He’d been there more than once, himself. He wondered briefly what could have gotten the kid into such a state and then shook his head, as though to clear the thought away. Not my problem, not my business.

Zhou Zishu hooked up the charging cables to his mods as he got settled in. Then he forced himself to down a bottle of water and half of a chalky protein pack to quiet his needy body’s demands. Then, finally, he unwound the access cable from its spool on his armrest and, with a sigh of relief, he jacked in.

To regular users like Zhou Zishu, the Jianghu network felt more like reality than realspace did. It was certainly more pleasant than realspace, that was for sure, even here, where there were still living plants and clean (well, clean enough) water to ogle and appreciate.

Inside the network Old Man Li’s place was just as barren as in realspace. No shock there, this tiny hub out in the boonies was hardly the sort of place to draw tourists, or the interest of code entities. The only other people he could see were the old man’s avatar idling in the corner; a lovely young woman wearing intricate braids and a purple dress who was pulling books off the wall in the hub’s library seemingly at random, flipping through them, and then re-shelving them without the slightest nod to their proper homes; and a generic system avatar that Zhou Zishu presumed the grubby kid in the chair was using. 

What kind of kid doesn’t have his own avatar at that age? Zhou Zishu marveled. That off-the-rack garbage he’s walking around in doesn’t even look like it's from a paid tier. 

He glanced back to the girl only to find her staring at him as though she had forgotten he was a real person who could see her watching. She was talking to someone that Zhou Zishu couldn’t see, but whose voice he could hear as though they were standing right here in the room together.

“Why would someone like him even be here?” the purple girl wanted to know.

“Why is anyone here, in this part of the world? He must be enjoying the scenery.”

“There’s nothing here,” the purple girl said flatly, and then flinched as though she’d been lightly slapped. 

“There’s a lot you don’t know about the world, stupid child,” the voice said, “so please take a moment to remember that every once in a while, and stop embarrassing yourself. And me.” 

 It was a really nice voice, Zhou Zishu decided -- musical, almost, despite the harshness of the words.

“Yeah, whatever. I think you’re fucking with me,” the purple girl decided. “I’m just gonna ask him.” 

“‘He’ can hear you, you know.” Zhou Zishu called out with an eye roll. 

“Well then, spill it, mister! You look like you’re pretty well off. Why the hell would you be in this shit hole, if you could be anywhere else in the world?”

Pretty, Zishu thought to himself, but the mouth on her ruins it a bit, doesn’t it?

“I’m here for the scenery, girlie. It’s one of the only places left in the country where it’s worth going outside. Everyone knows that, don’t they?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “Are you making fun of me, mister? Watch your mouth or I’ll scramble you so hard your connection gets fried.” 

Zhou Zishu laughed at her, this little girl hissing and spitting with all the indignation of a stray cat. 

Her eyes flashed as she lunged for him, clearly offended by his amusement, but in the end she came up short, jolting as if she’d been electrocuted.

“Ge…” she whined as she slinked back against the bookcase to sulk.

“Please forgive my sister,” the voice softly apologized to Zhou Zishu in a conversational tone. “It’s just the two of us. I’ve done my best to raise her properly but I’m afraid I was never really meant to be a parent.” 

“It’s fine,” Zhou Zishu shook his head dismissively, wondering idly about why someone would opt to interface in the Jianghu without a corporeal form. Surely that made it harder to get things done. How would he do things like open a door or push a button without a body? Still, it was a lovely voice. Maybe this was a new method for energy conservation. (The feds were always yammering on about how to stretch the limited bandwidth to accommodate the increasing demands as usage continued to spike.)

One thing he did know was that the pair were accessing the hub from elsewhere; their bodies weren’t jacked into the cubicles.

“What are you two doing out here?” he asked, “you don’t seem like nature tourists, if you don't mind me saying. Most people don’t bother remotely accessing this location. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone here except Uncle Li's in-person customers.” 

“We’re looking into this odd little stranger in the corner, actually," the voice explained in a pleasant, conversational tone, "he seems to have quite a story to tell.” 

Zhou Zishu turned and looked towards the only other person he could mean – the strange, filthy boy from the other cubicle. The boy looked up at the same moment, catching his eyes.

“Excuse me, Mister,” the kid addressed him in a voice that was well educated, timid, and clearly exhausted, "Can you help me? My family… I need…”

“I’m not the guy you’re looking for, kid,” Zhou Zishu interrupted, "but maybe these two–-” 

He cut himself off abruptly as he turned to glance over his shoulder and saw that the purple girl was gone, and that agreeable voice could no longer be heard anywhere. 

How odd.

“Anyway, I’m retired, kid. And even before that I was never in charge of returning lost puppies.”

The boy’s eyes dropped to the floor as his shoulders slumped in defeat. Zhou Zishu sighed, feeling annoyingly guilty. 

“Look, kid–-” he began, but was cut off as Old Man Li’s avatar came online with a gasp, eyes flying open, wild and panicked.

“Xiao Shu! Chengling! Someone’s here, they just tripped my perimeter alarms.”

“Why the fuck would someone be here?” Zhou Zishu asked, confused, “what would they want from you?”

Old Man Li’s gaze moved past Zhou Zishu to settle on the kid he'd called Chengling. 

“They’re after you?” he asked, incredulous.

The kid let out a strangled half sob and wrapped his arms around himself, tears welling up in his eyes before he let his gaze fall to the floor.

“This is Zhang Chengling,” Old Man Li explained, “Yusen’s kid. You know he helped me out, way back, when I needed to get off grid; I wouldn’t have this place without him. Look, Xiao Shu, I need you to bring him to Sanbai Holdings for me.”

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes. Was this old bastard out of his damn mind? 

“And what am I, your personal chauffeur?” he asked with considerable sarcasm.

“No,” Old Man Li shot back, “you’re just the grey-hat-wearing motherfucker who has the feds breathing down my neck every time you use my network hub. Do you know how many excuses I’ve had to make because of your shady ass dealings in my hub? You owe me, brat.”

Funny how people never seemed to remember what you owed them until they wanted something messy. And then suddenly your arm was twisted up behind your back and you wouldn’t even know how it got there.

Still, marching into an obviously dangerous situation was not what Zhou Zishu had in mind. He had no desire for his already brief retirement to be cut even shorter by something inconvenient like, you know, being shot to death.

“Zhang Yusen, like from Five Lakes?” he pressed for more details. “Why do you have his kid, Lao Li? Don't the Zhangs have more money than god, anyway? Why can’t they–-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish that question as Old Man Li jerked, eyes flying open in pain and shock, before collapsing to the floor. Someone was trying to kill him. It looked like they were succeeding.

Fuck.

Zhou Zishu dropped to his knees and Old Man Li grabbed his arm, rasping out, “Take him to Sanbai, brat. Please. Zhao Jing is looking for the kid, offering a reward. I know you’ve been looking… your condition… Zhao… money… help… Chengling,” he trailed off, becoming disoriented. His avatar flickered in and out for a moment.

“Yeah, okay,” Zhou Zishu agreed, in the end unable to refuse the last request of a dying man, “okay, I’ll do it, Lao Li. Just… save your strength.”

But they both knew it was too late for that. The old man coughed once more and then he was gone, avatar flickering into nothing – that meant his neural synapses were shutting down. 

“He’s dead?” Zhang Chengling whispered in the flat voice of someone too overwhelmed to be horrified.

Zhou Zishu nodded, turning to meet the kid’s eyes. 

“Yeah, he’s dead,” came the voice of the purple girl as her avatar popped back into the room, “and you will be too, in a minute, if you don’t move your asses. Get out! He can’t hold them out of here for much longer. Unplug, now!”

Zhou Zishu didn’t know why, but he trusted this girl, and he’d learned long ago to listen his gut instinct.

“You heard her,” he barked at Chengling. “Unplug, quick. I’m right behind you.”

Who the fuck would send a malicious program to a hole in the wall like this, in the middle of nowhere, to attack a stupid, wide eyed kid? 

It was probably for money, of course. (It was always for money.) Still… no time to worry about that now.

As soon as Zhou Zishu’s eyes popped open in realspace he yanked the network cable from the access port behind his ear and threw it to the ground like a venomous snake. He took slightly more care unplugging the mods from their charging cables -– the hardware was temperamental enough without him adding physical damage to complicate things. And then he ran to the office, stepping over Old Man Li’s lifeless body to pull the cord on the router, for good measure.  

“Move it, kid,” he shouted, jogging back to the cubicles to pull a disoriented and still incredibly filthy Zhang Chengling from his chair. “We need to get out of here.” 

They stopped in the kitchen to grab as many water bottles and meal packs as they could fit in both of their backpacks, and then Zhou Zishu led them out the back door and into the woods. 

“Best to stay out of sight for a few miles, just in case. We can cut through here and if we push forward we’ll intersect the paved road in about four miles.”

Wide eyed, Chengling just nodded.

“Okay, kid, let’s go.” 

Some retirement this was turning out to be. Zhou Zishu needed a drink.

Chapter Text

The day’s journey towards Sanbai Holdings was suspiciously easy. No one followed them. No one found them. They didn’t encounter a single stranger on the way. Even once they came back to the main road, every time Zhou Zishu looked up at a CCTV camera he found it was pointed away from him. It almost felt like someone online was watching over them, but that would be crazy, right? The amount of power you’d have to possess to do something like that over such a wide area… Well, suffice to say that Zhou Zishu didn’t have any friends in high enough places anymore to be capable of such a thing, let alone someone willing to risk their neck helping him, of all people.

He supposed even terminally ill, antisocial bastards like himself had to have good luck every once in a while. 

“What happened back there?” Zhang Chengling asked quietly as they trudged forward together, pulling Zhou Zishu out of his woolgathering.

Wasn’t it obvious? What rock has this kid been living under?

“Malware sent into the system,” he replied aloud, gruff and terse.

Chengling nodded in a way that made Zhou Zishu suspect he still had no idea what was going on. Zhou Zishu repressed a snort of laughter. 

They kept walking.

Later, the kid spoke again, asking, “What’s your name?” 

Had they really been walking together for more than two hours before the kid thought to ask? Hilarious. 

“Zhou… Xu,” he replied, pivoting to an alias at the last moment, just in case they were being watched. 

“Thank you, Zhou-shu,” Chengling told him earnestly, “for saving my life.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.”

They kept walking.

As the sun began to set, Zhou Zishu thought they should probably find a place to settle for the night. He scanned his GPS and found a small hostel that had been shut down three years earlier, obsolete due to a declining interest in physical travel – a global issue these days. The place had been popular once, but the owners hadn’t kept up with the evolving tech and nowadays their remote access options just weren’t good enough to keep them afloat. Bad news for them, but good news for Zhou Zishu who had a lock pick set that meant he and Chengling would have a place to sleep tonight out of the elements.

He let Chengling know his plan and then, feeling much less anxious with a relatively safe destination in mind, he let their conversation lapse, drifting into a comfortable silence as they walked. The kid was lost in his own head anyway, not much for chit chat. 

They spoke a bit more freely after settling in for the night, sitting on dusty mattresses in a room illuminated by a rusty old generator, sharing a couple of their protein packs while Zhou Zishu tried to tease out the details of Chenling’s story. As the kid recounted his gruesome tale – his family murdered in realspace by what seemed to be a random and vicious attack from the Ghost Valley, on the run for his life with no resources and no idea of what the attack had been intended to accomplish, Zhou Zishu’s sympathy grew. No child deserved to live through what he had endured in the past few days. 

As they switched off the power and laid down to rest, Chengling turned to Zhou Zishu with huge, wide eyes. 

“Thanks again for helping me, Zhou-shu. I don’t know… I’m sure I’d be dead without you.”

God, those eyes… Zhou Zishu swallowed hard against a lump in his throat, He looks just like Juxiao.  

“It’s nothing, kid,” he brushed off the thanks dismissively, “I’m just an opportunist looking for your rich Zhao-shu to hook me up with some treatments for the side effects from these damn glitchy body mods.” 

“Still, you didn’t have to help,” Chengling insisted. “I know you didn’t want to. I just… thanks.” 

“You’re welcome, kid.” 

Zhou Zishu slept better than he might have expected that night.

********

Zhao Jing was one of the bigwig execs at Five Lakes, the most prominent and influential developer in the Jianghu. He was known for being a schmoozer, an impeccable host, and a generous philanthropist, if not a particularly shrewd businessman. Still, he’d done well for himself even if he was only riding on the coattails of his more accomplished business partners. His place was amazing; even in realspace it was fit for a prince.

Once the two weary travelers had been settled in a guest suite, taken the time to nourish and clean their bodies, and were provided with clothing to wear while their own things were being laundered, they were ready to log into the Jianghu again, where Zhao Jing was apparently hosting a party. 

Zhou Zishu took the opportunity to use his own funds to upgrade Chengling’s avatar to something a bit less conspicuous. The one he had been running around with so far was the kind most commonly used by thieves and low-end dealers, and would attract a lot more attention than they were looking for. 

“Why don’t you have something custom, kid? You can’t say your family didn’t have the money.” 

Chengling shrugged. “Dad hated us playing online. He said we had to wait until we were at least eighteen.” 

His voice was tinged with the weariness of an oft-repeated fight, and the grief of realizing that he’d never have that fight ever again. 

Zhou Zishu saw the emotions flicker in his eyes and didn’t press for any more details. 

“Okay, kid, let’s plug in. You can finally see what a posh Jianghu party is like. You ready?”

Chengling nodded, wide eyed. And then they were in.

The event was predictably decadent. Zhao Jing, true to his reputation, had spared no expense. From the synth-foods to the CGI entertainment, everything was top of the line. Acrobats swung from trapezes, dancers writhed in cages, light shows and trippy art installations lit up every wall in a kaleidoscope of color, and the atmosphere was augmented with the kind of haze that Zhou Zishu knew came from a mild euphoric agent.

Zhou Zishu enjoyed taking in the awe on Chengling’s face almost as much as he enjoyed the kid’s crushing mortification when, distracted by a particularly attractive contortionist wearing almost nothing at all, he walked face first into a pillar.

Idiot, Zhou Zishu thought affectionately, rolling his eyes and grabbing the kid by the collar to pull him out of the path of foot traffic.

As the kid stared up at him sheepish and apologetic, a man approached smiling broadly. The face he wore was middle aged, but in the smooth way that meant he was rich enough to age gracefully. His avatar was outfitted in a suit that cost almost as much virtually as it would in realspace. This must be Zhao Jing. 

“Zhao-shu!” Chengling exclaimed, clearly pleased at having recognized someone here in this overwhelming circus. 

“Chengling, son, I’m so happy you’re safe here finally,” he said, eyes wide with emotion. He turned to Zhou Zishu, inclining his head in a perfectly polite gesture of respect. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, for having brought him back to us,” he said with more humility than Zhou Zishu might have expected from a man of his status. That always made him wary. 

“Think nothing of it,” he responded, equally polite, putting on a smile he wasn’t really feeling. 

“Please, Mr…”

“Zhou. Zhou Xu.” 

“Please, Mr Zhou, don’t downplay the difficulties you’ve faced. I know it was some trouble, and you were in personal danger more than once. It was good of you to take on such a burden, especially for a stranger.”

Zhou Zishu waved a hand to stop him fawning. “He’s just a kid. He should be with his family.”

“Is there anything I can do to show my gratitude?” Zhao Jing asked. 

Zhou Zishu flashed him the first sincere smile he’d worn all evening. “Well. Now that you mention it…”

*********

A half hour later Zhou Zishu left Zhao Jing’s private office with two micro drives in his pocket, containing some highly-sought-after therapy programs meant to make the human/cybernetic chimera of his body less likely to eat itself alive. 

“It may not help,” Zhao Jing had warned him, “but it can’t hurt.” 

Objective achieved, Zhou Zishu went back out into the party to find Chengling, who had unsurprisingly opted to enjoy the entertainment rather than following his reluctant guide into some back office for tech he didn’t understand.

Unexpectedly, the purple girl from earlier was there. Zhou Zishu noticed her lounging against the edge of a table, watching two contortionists bend their avatars into a series of fascinatingly fluid pretzels. She was accompanied by a tall, slender man with one of the most striking faces Zhou Zishu had ever seen, though there was something slightly unnerving about him even in the low light of the party. The term, ‘uncanny valley’ sprang to mind, which felt silly considering they were all using virtual avatars. Maybe it was just the way the man stared ahead of him, unblinking and intense. He didn’t seem human. 

He had a shock of white hair falling into his eyes, cut into a tousled, asymmetrical, angled bob.

He was wearing an almost indecently tight PVC ensemble – a bespoke jacket and pants –  that might have been green or maybe teal, it was hard to tell which in the low lights, with the smoke machines going. The pants were tucked into black platform boots adorned with an entirely stupid number of buckles. Black fingerless gloves and a gauzy red scarf draped around his shoulders like a cowl completed the look, and his intense, disturbing eyes were lined in red, adding to his otherworldly appearance. 

They always say that dangerous things in nature are the brightest colors. 

This was probably the best-looking avatar Zhou Zishu had ever seen. Too bad people who looked that good were invariably insufferable about it.

“Zhou-shu! There you are!” Chengling’s voice calling out to him over the pulsing bass of the music startled him out of his thoughts. Zhou Zishu turned to him and tousled his hair with an affectionate, “Hey there, brat.” 

Their words attracted the attention of both the purple girl and her lovely teal companion.

“Ah, here’s the unparalleled beauty,” the man smiled as he spoke, sauntering towards them like he was greeting old friends, confirming Zhou Zishu’s assumption that this was the invisible man with the melodious voice he’d been speaking to before, in the library at Old Man Li’s. 

Blinking at the stranger’s words, Zhou Zishu glanced down at his intentionally unremarkable avatar, which wore a nondescript navy t-shirt and faded black cargo pants along with a battered, black leather bomber jacket and motorcycle boots. Once upon a time Beiyuan had joked that this particular avatar was just the generic knockoff version of his real face; it was not precisely unlike his own, but had been designed specifically to be forgettable, mathematically average, nothing memorable -– a valuable asset for one who made his career in information gathering. 

“I think you need to get your eyes checked, man,” Zhou Zishu told his new acquaintance with a wry smile, “and besides, you don’t know a damn thing about me. I don’t actually look like this.” 

The man’s lovely smile widened as he waved a graceful hand dismissively in the air.

“Who cares about your meat?” he scoffed. “You’re beautiful where it counts. I’ve never seen such elegant code. Your rendering is exquisite, even if the subject matter is simple. The algorithms and layers of protocols you’re using are clearly bespoke, and I’d be willing to bet money you wrote them yourself. Even your shoulder blades are hypnotizing.”

My… shoulder blades? What a fucking line. It took every ounce of Zhou Zishu’s self control not to laugh in this fool’s face.

The thing was, ridiculous flirting aside, the guy wasn’t wrong. Zhou Zishu truly did have extremely elegant protocols built into his various avatars’ functionalities. This curious stranger must really know his stuff, if he could figure out details like that after only two brief meetings. 

Zhou Zishu had learned from the best of the best. He went for classic designs, nothing flashy or trendy. The result was elegantly understated, always focused on function over form. He liked being underestimated. The stranger was right about the bespoke elements, too. Zhou Zishu needed to be able to blend into the scenery and become invisible, and perception cloaking was one of the most expensive kinds of tech out there. Even someone who was as financially comfortable as him could never have bought and paid for those features at retail prices, so he had to learn to write what he needed by himself. As for the rest – the agility, strength, and speed -– like all the very best coding, those functionalities had been handed down to Zhou Zishu from his mentor, as his mentor had done before him, like lineage, a family inheritance. Those codes weren’t for sale to anyone.

Zhou Zishu took a moment to be impressed with the stranger’s level perception, and started to tell him as much, but before he could even open his mouth he realized the man was looking him up and down with one of the most overt leers Zhou Zishu had ever received. 

Oh god, is he one of those code-fetishizing freaks? he wondered with considerable horror, God, no. I don’t have the energy to deal with those weirdos right now. I write this shit to earn a living, man, not get your rocks off.

Time to get out of there.

“The kid and I are gonna take a look around. Have a good evening Mr…” 

“Kexing,” he beamed, a beautiful smile that lit up his whole face, “Wen Kexing.”

“See you later, Wen Kexing.”

“And please allow me to introduce my sister, Gu Xiang,” Wen Kexing went on to say, as though Zhou Zishu hadn’t just said he was leaving.

What is this guy’s deal?

Well, they had helped him out earlier. He supposed he could try not to be rude, at least for a minute.

“A pleasure, Gu Xiang,” he said, forcing an amiable smile. 

She grinned and nodded, staring at him like he was a circus attraction. 

“What’s your brother like under all that glamor?” he asked, both because he felt like he needed to say something and also because he was honestly curious.

“Oh, you know,” she shrugged, “nothing much. Just a bunch of ones and zeroes, really.” 

Without meaning to, Zhou Zishu chuckled. The girl was funny. 

With an unexpectedly genuine smile he excused himself to get a drink. Chengling followed, like he was scared to be left on his own. 

Fair enough, after the week he’s been having. But it would probably be easier on him if he weren’t so damn helpless.  

If Zhou Zishu was one of the best coders in the room, it was certain that Zhang Chengling was among the absolute worst. The child was one of the least proficient network users Zhou Zishu had ever seen. It was almost hilarious, truly, given how well known his father was in the Jianghu. Zhang Yusen had been the most private and withdrawn of all the Five Lakes’ execs. Chengling’s fumbling attempts to navigate the Jianghu were especially baffling because he was clearly bright if you sat and spoke to him in realspace, but as long as he was jacked in he was stumbling and awkward, as clumsy as a newborn foal. 

It was annoyingly endearing. 

Zhou Zishu threw back his drink and immediately ordered another. 

The kid was growing on him. 

Fuck. 

*********

Zhou Zishu woke up to the sound of their voices -– Gu Xiang and Wen Kexing –- arguing somewhere nearby.

He’d fallen asleep plugged in after a few too many synth vodkas. Waking up in the Jianghu in an unfamiliar location always put him on his guard. 

“He isn’t safe here, Ge,” Gu Xiang whispered urgently. Zhou Zishu couldn’t tell whether her voice was coming from outside the door or outside the window. Jianghu acoustics were funny like that.

“Thank you, A-Xiang, I’ll take care of it,” came Wen Kexing’s deeper tone, measured and cold.  

And then, somehow, he was in Zhou Zishu’s bedroom.

What the fuck?

“How the hell did you get in here so fast?” Zhou Zishu demanded, bolting up in his bed, “Can you walk through the fucking walls or something? The access codes–-” 

“You need to get the kid out of here, immediately,” Wen Kexing interrupted, eyes flashing with something sharp, like panic.

“What the hell, I just got him here, and now you’re telling me to leave? Old Man Li–”

“The old man didn’t have the whole story,” Wen Kexing insisted, the anxiety in his eyes clear. “I don’t think he’s safe here.” 

“Safe?”

“The kid.”

Fuck.

“Well then,” Zhou Zishu sighed, rubbing his eyes and trying to wake himself up, “where the fuck should I take him?” 

“You need to get somewhere that you’re in control of access -- I mean physical access.”

“Why do you care about this kid so much? You don’t even know him.”

Wen Kexing’s eyes went ice cold. 

“Children deserve to be protected,” he said. “Once upon a time I wasn’t.” 

It was a more honest sounding answer than Zhou Zishu had been expecting.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he conceded. “We’ll go. I’ve got a place.”

“Good. And then we’re going to go to the Dragon Pool” 

“Why the fuck would we–”

“I’ve got a lead from Ye Baiyi.” 

“Ye Baiyi? Are you kidding me right now? That old fossil hasn’t been seen in decades.” 

“We have no time for this now,” Wen Kexing chided him. “Time to unplug. You better do it before Chengling, or he’ll wake the whole place with his screaming. A-Xiang is effective, but she does make a mess.”

What the fuck does he mean by that? 

But it was too late to ask. He was already resurfacing. 

As soon he opened his eyes in realspace he understood. While they’d been sleeping, there had been something of a bloodbath. Two would-be assailants lay crumpled and burned by his bedside, electrocuted on circuits that should have been good for years, yet. Someone must have tampered them to get them to blow. How weird. 

Still, he was grateful. These people could have destroyed them both while they slept like babies.

Thanks, A-Xiang.

*********

Zhou Zishu always hoped he’d return to Siji Manor someday. He never figured it would be like this -– on the run from a threat he didn’t understand, with a kid he barely knew, desperate for a safe place to stash his body so he had enough time to actually figure out what the hell was going on.

Still, no place like home, right? 

As they made their way through realspace they heard over the radio that Ghost Valley was identified as being responsible for the attack on Sanbai Holdings. 

That can’t be true, Zhou Zishu puzzled. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. What would a Ghost have to gain, trying to take out me and Chengling? And the attack wasn’t even their style, besides. The Ghosts hate dealing with realspace. 

For that matter, why would the Ghosts have attacked Chengling’s family in the first place? The whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth. 

After they had arrived at Siji and locked themselves safely inside the imposing walls of the estate, Zhou Zishu jump started the generators. While he was putting the motion sensors and other security systems back online he instructed Chengling to prepare himself for a long stay in one of Siji’s famed cryo-stasis chambers -– meaning a shower, a course of vitamin injections, and an I.V. drip intended to dispense a state of the art drug invented by Zhou Zishu’s old compatriot Wu Xi a lifetime or two earlier.

“The drug slows down all your body’s functions except brain activity,” he explained to Chengling, toweling off his hair after his own shower, “and to some extent your major organs –- heart and lungs, liver and kidneys -– to keep the brain fed. Your metabolism slows so much that a simple I.V. can keep you alive for weeks, and the cryo chamber keeps your muscles and nerves healthy.”

“People can… do that?” Chengling asked, wide eyed.

“Most people can’t,” Zhou Zishu told him with an arrogant smirk, “but I can, and then the bed does the rest. You’ll have a hell of a hangover when we wake up, but no bed sores. That’s not nothing.”

Chengling regarded the bed again, this time with a hint of wonder.

“Zhou Xu, can I study with you after all this is over?”

Zhou Zishu snorted. “Do I look like teacher material to you?”

“Yes,” Chengling insisted, unfazed.

“Fuck off, kid. Now hit that yellow switch there and lay down before you plug in. We need to make sure the vacuum seal is intact.”

“And then what?”

“And then you get to see what the Jianghu is like for real denizens, and not just tourists.”

Chapter Text

He’d missed this, Zhou Zishu admitted to himself. He had missed having the freedom to roam without worrying about his tediously needy meatsack back in realspace. Traveling within the Jianghu like this had been his entire career -– hell, his entire world, not so long ago. It would probably always would always feel like home. He’d spent more of his life here than not, between his work with Tian Chuang and their political efforts and all his damnable family ties. And then, of course, there was the fact that everything hurt so much less when he was in here. The lights and the music and the chaos at Sanbai had distracted him before, but now that they were out in the open it was entirely obvious that the constant, draining ache he felt from the mods was only a fraction of the intensity he had to deal with in realspace. 

He had made arrangements to meet Wen Kexing at a tavern within the Jianghu, at one of the hubs closest to the Dragon Pool servers. He and Chengling arrived first, so Zhou Zishu claimed a corner table with a good view of the front door and called over a server to order them drinks. 

“I’m not old enough to drink,” Chengling reminded him with a tiny smile that somehow managed to be both shy and mocking when Zhou Zishu attempted to pour him a shot of liquor.

“Great,” drawled Zhou Zishu, who truly couldn’t remember the last time he’d concerned himself with the legal drinking age, “more for me, then.”

“Shifu, do you even feel it here?” Chengling asked as Zhou Zishu knocked back both shots in quick succession. “The alcohol, I mean?” 

“Who are you calling shifu?” Zhou Zishu scowled. The kid had been begging for Zhou Zishu to be his mentor since they’d plugged themselves in. It was exhausting. He cuffed Chengling upside the head, but the little weasel just grinned at him with an adorably unrepentant, dimpled smile. Zhou Zishu felt the cold block of ice in his chest thaw just a little. 

Dammit, Zishu, you're going soft. 

“Yes, you can feel it when you drink. This tech is all about stimulating the right parts of your brain. All of the chemicals you need to feel high as a kite are in there already, your body just needs to be told how to use them.”

“That’s so cool,” Chengling murmured to himself, as though this were some kind of new, exciting discovery and not decades old, run-of-the-mill entertainment tech. 

“Why don’t you know all this already, kid?” he asked, honestly bewildered. “This shit is common knowledge for teenagers everywhere I’ve ever visited.”

Chengling made a sound that was almost a laugh, except that it was miserable. 

“Like I said before,”  he explained wearily, eyes far away, “My parents don’t… didn’t like it. They hated the whole culture of the Jianghu. Especially after… Well, it was a long time ago, before I was born. I heard my dad had a falling out with the other owners at Five Lakes because he was worried about the ethics of some of the research that his partners were developing. He didn’t like to talk about it, but my mom told me that they had a few really nasty arguments before my dad realized they weren’t going to listen to him. So, that was it. He had the other four buy him out of his shares of the company. Then he took my mom and the baby –- my oldest brother –- to live on our island property near Old Man Li’s network hub. 

“He’d had the place built as a vacation home after they got married, for off-grid relaxation, but we ended up just living there full time. From that point on he kept us pretty disconnected. I wasn’t allowed to spend time in the Jianghu for fun at all… I used to get so mad at him…. We learned enough about the general network interface to attend and pass our classes at school, but we could never spend time there without a reason and ‘appropriate adult supervision.’ Whatever that's supposed to mean.” 

Even the weight of all Chengling’s raw grief couldn’t suppress the annoyed, adolescent eye roll at that particular (admittedly draconian) rule. 

Zhou Zishu felt a twinge of sympathy for him. Most kids Chengling’s age had spent plenty of time in the Jianghu by now, exploring, discovering, and learning how to interface with the system and its features in a way that let them feel at ease. Chengling’s lack of experience had him behaving as clumsily as a seven year old, tentatite and awkward. It would have been social suicide, for a kid his age trying to make friends, and now his fumbling was a real, dangerous liability. 

His parents did him a real disservice, Zhou Zishu thought, trying to keep him safe from all this. Now they’re gone, and the poor kid can’t even begin to take care of himself. No wonder he keeps pushing me to teach him. How is he gonna survive out there? 

“You don’t have any idea what the tech was that the execs were fighting about?” he asked to stop himself from fixating too much on Chengling’s bleak future prospects. 

The kid shrugged. “Not really. He never said. I think it was about A.I. programs?”

Zhou Zishu nodded. That lined up with everything he knew about Five Lakes. 

“They were always as close as brothers,” Chengling went on to say, “the execs, I mean. They grew up together. Zhao-shu was so nice to me back there… I don’t know what happened to cause them to grow so far apart, but it must have been bad. I have to… I have to set things right. Whoever did this to us has to pay.”

And that, of course, was the root of all this ridiculous “shifu” business. Like a dog worrying a bone Chengling kept coming back to it, begging Zhou Zishu to teach him because there just… wasn’t really anyone else in his life left to do so, except the men his father had denounced as his friends -- people that even Chengling knew to be wary of until he figured out who was responsible for destroying his home. But he needed to learn how to survive and thrive in the Jianghu if he ever hoped to exact his revenge. Enter Zhou Zishu.

I get it, kid, Zhou Zishu thought to himself, I really do. Once upon a time I might even have been the right person to help you out, but now? Ha. Now, just thinking about that kind of vendetta only makes me more tired. 

If the kid really wanted revenge, the fact of the matter was he should pick a mentor with a better chance of living long enough to help him see it through. 

How fucking depressing.

Zhou Zishu poured another shot and threw it back as though he could use it to wash the bitterness out of his thoughts. Too bad Jianghu booze wasn’t any better than real booze, on that count. 

*********

When Wen Kexing arrived, Zhou Zishu noticed him immediately. How could he not? The man was impossible to miss, after all, that teal PVC getup of his catching the afternoon sunlight as he stood in the doorway and scanned the crowd. The cut of the jacket highlighted both his broad shoulders and narrow waist. The boots added at least two inches to his already impressive height. His eyes glittered like he was laughing at some kind of private joke, and that sinful, red mouth of his spread lazily into an incandescent smile when he caught Zhou Zishu’s eye. He sauntered towards them like a fashion model on a runway, confident that every eye in the tavern was on him.

Most of them were, Zhou Zishu noted sourly, forcing his own gaze away from this blatant, tasteless display of peacocking.

“Be careful of that guy,” he warned Chengling quietly as Wen Kexing made his way over, “I can’t figure out his angle, and it feels fishy.”

“He said–-”

“He says a lot, kid, that doesn’t mean a damn thing except that he likes the sound of his own voice. You can’t trust everything people say, even you should know that.”

“He just seems lonely,” Chengling commented idly, brushing off the implied insult in Zhou Zishu’s words, and then as an afterthought added, “I like him.”

“Do you even know him?” Zhou Zishu found himself unaccountably annoyed by that observation.

“No,” Chengling retorted, chin thrust out in defiance, “but I do know ‘lonely’ pretty damn well.”

Fair enough, Zhou Zishu granted, surprised that the kid had bothered to talk back. Maybe there was a backbone hiding under all that baby fat after all. 

He was spared from having to come up with an appropriately scathing comeback by Wen Kexing’s approach. He sank into the chair across from Zhou Zishu with all of the entitlement of a feudal lord in his palace, immediately reaching for both of the shot glasses in front of Zhou Zishu and refilling them from the carafe at the table, handing one back and keeping the second for himself.

For a moment they just stared at each other.

Zhou Zishu was irrationally annoyed at him for being so hot, and madder at himself for being into it. It had been a long time since a person had caught and held his interest like this, even longer since he had felt a flicker of desire, and now he was apparently drawn to this pest? How embarrassing.

“I’m impressed at the time you made,” Wen Kexing said approvingly with only a hint of condescension. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

He extended a graceful hand, raising his glass and waiting politely. Zhou Zishu huffed out an annoyed breath and clinked his shot against the glass Wen Kexing held before throwing it down his throat. He didn’t miss the way Wen Kexing’s eyes trailed along the column of his neck, looking him over much the same way a snake regards a rodent. Predatory.

“I think you’ll find I’m full of surprises, Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu remarked with a measured look. 

You might be a snake, after all, but I’m the mongoose.

Wen Kexing beamed at the overly familiar appellation and downed his own shot, placing the empty glass gently on the table before him. 

“Where’s your purple shadow?” Zhou Zishu wanted to know.

“I sent A-Xiang to Yueyang,” he replied easily, “to do some recon. Gao Chong would be the next logical person willing to take in the boy, after all, but after what just happened at Sanbai I don’t particularly trust any of them. Do you?”

He raised an eyebrow in inquiry as he spoke and let his tongue dart out to catch a drop of liquor off of his full bottom lip. Zhou Zishu’s eyes tracked the movement without his consent, and he was disgusted with himself for being so obvious about it. Of course Wen Kexing noticed. He preened, like it was some kind of accomplishment. 

Idiot.

“How did you know we were already here?” Zhou Zishu asked, changing the subject to the first thing that crossed his mind. “I didn’t even have time to send a message before you showed up.”

“I have my ways,” Wen Kexing smiled enigmatically. Then he cocked his head. “Where are your bodies?”

“Shifu has us safe at his childhood home in–-”  Zhou Zishu smacked him again on the back of the head. The kid didn’t have the sense he was born with, apparently.

Chengling looked appropriately chastised, wide eyed and apologetic as Zhou Zishu glared. 

“But… Wen-shu has been helping us this whole time,” he reasoned as Wen Kexing excused himself to speak to the proprietor about securing rooms for the night for them to rest. 

“And why is that?” Zhou Zishu demanded. Chengling didn’t have an answer for that.

“If he meant us harm, surely he could have just let us die by now.” 

It was true. Zhou Zishu had to grant him that. But if that was the case… Why was he helping? Something about this guy just put him on edge. Too magnetic, too charming, too pretty. People like that were never good news. 

“You’re far too trusting for someone who just lost his entire family to an attack by someone whose motivations the police can’t even figure out.”

It was a low blow, and the kid turned a little grey at the careless mention of his family’s death. But at least it shut him up. Keeping him safe was more important than coddling his feelings right now. 

“Why are you asking about our bodies?” he asked bluntly when Wen Kexing returned with their room keys, deciding he was done with playing games. 

“Now, now, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing tsk’d, admonishing, “so suspicious and mistrustful!”

“A-Xu?” Was he serious?

“May I call you A-Xu?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“A-Xu, don’t be like that. If I meant you any harm, surely I could have hurt you a hundred times already.”

Chengling gave him a wounded look that clearly said, That’s exactly what I was just trying to say! and then ducked out of the way before Zhou Zishu could pop him again. 

It was better, of course, that this odd stranger didn’t mean Chengling any harm. But if not, then what could he possibly want? 

Zhou Zishu took a deep breath to let go of his frustration and poured himself another drink. No sense in being impatient. The truth would out, it always did, eventually. For now, they were allies, and they were allies with booze. That suited Zhou Zishu just fine.

*********

By the time they had ordered the fourth carafe Zhou Zishu was feeling more charitable in his opinions. Wen Kexing might be annoying, loud, and suspiciously, problematically charming, but he was also as smart as a whip, witty, a great storyteller, and his avatar was truly impressive. The complexity of the coding alone must have been staggering, based on how fluid and organic his movements and expressions seemed. It was distracting, to say the least, and made exponentially worse by all of the obnoxious flirting. 

Wen Kexing flirted with Zhou Zishu, yes, but also with every young man who passed their table. He even flirted with the shy, blushing server who brought their drinks, but when the latter began to show the hints of a reciprocal interest, Wen Kexing backtracked immediately, demurring with a sweet smile and explaining, “Ah, no, my heart is already promised to this beauty, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry to tease you, handsome stranger.” 

(He was absolutely not sorry and they all knew it.)

Zhou Zishu considered his own nondescript avatar, its gaunt build and baggy clothes, and he was entirely unsure whether Wen Kexing was making fun of him or not. He could have two thirds of the people in this tavern eating out of the palm of his hand with a word. Why on earth would he waste time with plain, disagreeable Zhou Zishu?

As the evening wore on he sent Chengling to their newly rented room to do some body weight exercises to improve his physical agility within the network, and strict instructions for an early bedtime.

“You need rest here, too, no matter what. Your brain can’t do without it, even if you don’t feel as fatigued as you would in realspace. Trust me on this. Lights out by midnight or you’ll regret it.”

After Chengling had gone Zhou Zishu poured another round of drinks and turned to Wen Kexing. 

“Why are you helping us?” he asked again, this time in his Tian Chuang voice. No one alive was better at getting intel than Zhou Zishu. 

“You were in need! Is it not enough to do things for the greater good?”

“No,” he said flatly. People didn’t work like that. “Why are you here?” he pressed.

Wen Kexing regarded him for a few moments with that too-steady, intense stare of his.

“You’re the most interesting man I’ve ever met,” he said, “and you’re dying, I think, but you don’t seem to care. It's fascinating. If you expire before I have the chance to understand you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

He punctuated the last words with a pout, blinking seductively at Zhou Zishu through sooty lashes.

Against his will Zhou Zishu felt a flicker of arousal spark low in his belly. Wen Kexing spoke with so much feeling one could almost believe he was sincere. Zhou Zishu had a sudden, gripping urge to make him cry, to mess up his makeup, to break this flawless act of his and see what his too-pretty face would look like with red eyeshadow streaked by mascara tears. The intensity of his desire surprised him.  

Dangerous. 

“You’re full of shit,” he dismissed Wen Kexing with an eye roll to hide his discomfort. 

The pathetic face he got in response just made Zhou Zishu want to mess him up even more –- to bite that pouty bottom lip until it bled, maybe.

“I need another drink,” he declared, using the excuse of flagging down the server to break their heated gaze. 

After they procured yet another carafe of liquor, Wen Kexing finally relented.

“At first I was only investigating the Zhang family’s massacre,” he confided, “wondering who could have done such a thing and what they wanted from Chengling’s family in the first place. But then I met you, and I just couldn’t figure out why such a talented stranger would be so invested in helping a lost little boy he’s never even met. It doesn’t make sense. I briefly believed you were just a code entity programmed to help him, but then I learned you have a body. You’re human! And you’re still helping! In my experience people helping lost little boys usually have unsavory motives.”

“Oh so you’re just keeping an eye on him, then? Making sure I’m not a creep?”

“Oh I know you’re a creep, don’t worry. I figured that out days ago. It’s just the flavor I’m curious about. What kind of business does a high level Tian Chuang operative have this far out on the fringes of the Jianghu? What stake does Jin Wang have in this game?”

Fuck, he is good, Zhou Zishu admitted to himself with grudging respect. The only protocols that he used at all anymore which could theoretically be traced back to Tian Chuang were the life support systems that maintained his mods –- the ones he literally couldn’t live without. He knew there were traceable algorithms in the code but no one yet had managed to make that connection. Until now. 

Zhou Zishu didn’t react outwardly, he knew he didn’t, but Wen Kexing smiled anyway, with that strange, reptilian focus. It was like he could see straight through Zhou Zishu’s avatar and into his mind. 

And I’m the creepy one. Right.

“I’m retired,” Zhou Zishu opted to say, not wanting to insult Wen Kexing’s considerable intellect with an obvious lie. 

“I wasn’t aware that Tian Chuang just… let people retire these days.”

“They don’t,” Zhou Zishu said, baring his teeth in the facsimile of a grin. And then, before Wen Kexing could get too nosy, he added, “It’s a long story, and not very interesting.” 

“Well then, what about Siji? How are you connected there?”

Zhou Zishu sighed. Now, here was a wound that would probably never heal.

Siji (the business, not the estate where he had grown up) was a software development company which Zhou Zishu had been forced to sell to the government after Qin Huaizhang’s unexpected death. In their heyday they had been a key player in the security industry, and had the patents on a bunch of code that was meant to monitor unsavory activity in a broad range of industries. After the acquisition, the government had taken all of Siji’s extensive work and effectively reduced it into surveillance software for the state. These days the tech was mostly used to crush Jin Wang’s political enemies and make inconvenient people "disappear.” 

It was one of Zhou Zishu’s greatest failures. He thought Quin Huaizhang was probably rolling in his grave right now.

“Why do you care?” Zhou Zishu asked aloud, carefully modulating his voice to avoid sounding petulant or defensive.

“I told you, you’re the most compelling person I’ve ever met,” Wen Kexing insisted, “and I want to know everything about you.”  

“You need to get out more.”

“You have no idea. But I stand by what I said. And I’m certain your physical face is just as lovely and elegant as your coding.“

God he’s laying it on thick.

“What about you?” Zhou Zishu asked, eager to shift the focus of the conversation away from himself, “what’s your endgame? You don’t get why I’m helping the kid. I don’t get why you’re trying to butter me up so much.”

“Do I need a reason to flirt with a beauty?”

“Are you glitching or something?”

“I assure you these protocols are flawless.”

“Oh, so you’re just insane.”

“Quite possibly,” he agreed easily. “Another drink? I’ve heard that light inebriation makes my company exceedingly palatable.”

Despite himself, Zhou Zishu laughed at that, earning himself a dazzling smile from his companion. “Yeah, yeah okay.”

*********

When Zhou Zishu eventually stood up he felt the pleasantly tipsy feeling of being drunk in the Jianghu. It was truly the best high: all the buzz, only a fraction of the cellular damage. He didn’t like to consider what his liver would look like right now if he drank this much in realspace. 

Wen Kexing followed him all the way to the door of the suite he was sharing with Chengling. He didn’t say good-night, nor make any moves to continue down the hallway to his own room. He just stood there staring at Zhou Zishu with that strange, unblinking gaze of his. 

Zhou Zishu felt seen in a way he rarely experienced. It was unsettling. He fought the urge to fidget or shift from foot to foot, instead focusing on the prominent cheekbones, the smooth skin, the thick, sooty eyelashes of Wen Kexing’s avatar, and wondering what he might look like in the flesh, behind all the code and protocols. 

He really is beautiful, isn’t he, when he’s not trying to fill every single silence with as many words as he can speak? I wonder if that mouth is good for anything except talking.  

Zhou Zishu blinked and cleared his throat. That was quite enough of that line of thinking. Wen Kexing didn’t move at all, he just kept looking, like studying Zhou Zishu’s face was the most important thing he had to do all day.

“Did you need something else?” Zhou Zishu asked when the silence got too heavy to stand, and cringed internally at how low and breathy his voice sounded.

Wen Kexing reached forward and ran his knuckles along the edge of Zhou Zishu’s jaw. Zhou Zishu shivered at the contact, which made Wen Kexing smile. Not everyone had avatars designed with such nuanced tactile properties, after all. 

“Are you really just a human” Wen Kexing asked, cocking his head in thought.

“Haven’t you talked to me enough to figure that out by now?” Zhou Zishu replied. Even the most advanced code entities had limitations which would, upon close enough inspection, give them away. Wen Kexing was plenty close enough to find any tells like that in Zhou Zishu, based on the level of expertise he'd already displayed. 

Why was Zhou Zishu letting him stand so close, anyway? That was unlike him. He retreated a step, but came up short with his back against the door. Wen Kexing, apparently heedless of social cues, stepped forward again to close the distance between them.

“I’ve just never found a human being so interesting before,” Wen Kexing murmured like he was sharing a secret, stroking Zhou Zishu's cheekbone with a thumb, sending tingles down his spine. “You make me want to…”

He trailed off, lost for a minute in his own mind, but not before a shiver ran through Zhou Zishu’s whole body in the wake of his intimate tone.  

“I make you want to what?” Zhou Zishu prompted, against his better judgment.

Wen Kexing’s answering smile was absolutely predatory. He leaned in close, like he was breathing Zhou Zishu’s scent, which was crazy, because smell was the hardest sense to imitate within the Jianghu. It was too visceral, too instinctual, and that made it harder for computers to trick the mind into falling for imitations. 

Zhou Zishu gave a shaky exhale and swallowed hard. What was he thinking, letting Wen Kexing get so close? He felt like the proverbial moth, helplessly drawn to the flame that would certainly kill it. 

And then Wen Kexing kissed him.

Zhou Zishu was so startled that for a moment, he forgot to be upset and push him off. Besides, he told himself, he didn’t want to wake the kid and have him get the wrong idea, so it was best to take the path of least resistance and just wait for it to be over. It was just a kiss. Right? It didn’t mean a thing. His traitorous pulse picked up anyway. Wen Kexing definitely noticed, pulling back enough to smile against Zhou Zishu’s parted lips before leaning in again, this time with an edge of teeth. 

Zhou Zishu couldn’t remember ever having been kissed so thoroughly, actually. He meant to break free, he really did, but Wen Kexing was too damned distracting. The feeling of his hands tangled in Zhou Zishu’s hair set his nerves tingling, tore a helpless, needy moan out of his throat which Wen Kexing swallowed with a growl, deepening the kiss. He was overwhelming up close like this, warm and solid and demanding. He even smelled good. How the fuck did he smell so good? 

“What the fuck?” Zhou Zishu demanded when they finally parted, both of them gasping for air. He was so turned on he could barely think, his cock swelling with want as he fought his body's instinctive reaction to arch forward into Wen Kexing's arms for more -- more kisses, more touch, more everything. He felt like he was starving.

”Forgive my manners,’ Wen Kexing begged in a tone that didn’t even pretend at sounding apologetic, voice thick and gravelly with desire, “but I’ve been dying to do that since we first met.”

“Bullshit,” Zhou Zishu spat back at him, causing a brief flash of what looked like real annoyance to cross that beautiful, passion-dark face.

“I would never lie to you, A-Xu.” 

“Really? Then why me, if you have no ulterior motive? I’m just -– you could have anyone, and you know it.” 

“Are you calling me beautiful?”

Insufferable peacock. 

“I’m calling you a plague! An affliction! Now shut up,” Zhou Zishu growled, and dragged Wen Kexing back down by the hair for another kiss.

Wen Kexing moaned into his mouth and melted against him, pinning him to the closed door with a hand on each of his hips. He was hard too, Zhou Zishu realized with something like elation, and the press of their cocks against each other through the layers of their clothes was maddening, both too much to handle and not enough to be satisfying.

There was no way he was human. He just couldn’t be. Zhou Zishu had kissed many people in the Jianghu and not one of them felt like this. Every touch of Wen Kexing's hands felt like it was sending a low level electric current through Zhou Zishu's body. He felt like ozone smelled, crackling with energy and a hint of danger. It was absolutely intoxicating. But then, if not human, what was he? Logic said he must be a code entity, but that couldn’t be right either. Even the most sophisticated pleasure programs couldn’t keep up with the level of conversation they’d been maintaining all night. Not to mention this... the kissing and the grinding and the gasping, panting nips of teeth that were making it impossible for Zhou Zishu to think about anything at all except how hungry he was for more.

“What are you?” Zhou Zishu breathed, incredulous, reeling, and so hard his cock throbbed.

“I’m your soulmate,” Wen Kexing answered softly, nuzzling against his temple like he was breathing in the scent of Zhou Zishu's hair. 

Zhou Zishu snorted. Yeah, right.

“It's getting late,” Wen Kexing murmured with regret, moving to give a last, gentle brush of his lips against Zhou Zishu's. "And we have a big day tomorrow. Good night, beauty."

And then he was gone, leaving Zhou Zishu flushed, breathless and painfully aroused as he disappeared without a backwards glance into his own room for the night.

What. The fuck.

Chapter Text

Zhou Zishu woke up abruptly from a dream about Wen Kexing’s mouth, terribly aroused and feeling really vulnerable and pissy about it. He wasn’t used to being toyed with... or was this flirting? He was largely unfamiliar with both, actually. Most people usually just ignored him; he designed his network avatars specifically so that people would ignore him. The fact that this guy has been able to see straight through the intentionally nondescript, forgettable face he’s been wearing, able to figure out how advanced the code he used to build it actually is, was both impressive and highly suspicious. It was also, infuriatingly, incredibly hot. 

The expertise needed to see that kind of detail on a surface level like the Jianghu’s UI was... considerable. Wen Kexing may act like a vapid idiot party-boy, but he was clearly anything but, and Zhou Zishu was itching to pull off his mask and see what was under it. (He found that infuriating, too.) 

Of course, he thought to himself, ignoring his hard-on and checking the daily diagnostic reports for his and Chengling's current health stats back at the manor, of all the guys in my life, it's the shady, obnoxious one I meet when I'm halfway in the grave that I can't stop thinking about. It was typical, wasn’t it? He'd always had awful taste and terrible timing, no reason why this instance should be any different.

Feeling restless, he dragged himself out of bed, put himself together and left his room, heading outside the inn to do some morning exercises. Here, where his aptitude and martial strength were built on mental agility and the elegance of his code-writing, it was easy to forget all the aches and pains of his dying body back in realspace. (Sometimes, when he was at his best, he liked to imagine that he was one of the fighters in those old wuxia flicks from back in the day… And if he maybe adapted his avatars’ strengths and abilities to reflect those old stories? Well, no one but him had to know that.)

As he worked through his regular katas he let himself sink into the meditation. Moving here felt good, meditative focus came easily, and he ended up so lost in his own world that he almost didn’t notice Chengling approaching. 

"Shifu," the kid breathed from a few feet away, notably impressed, "I didn't know you could do all this. You look so different... in here." 

"You mean I look better when I'm not in debilitating pain?" Zhou Zishu snorted, amused. "Funny how that works." 

"Is there really such a big difference?" Chengling asked, painfully earnest. 

Between dying and not dying? Kid, don't be ridiculous. 

Aloud Zhou Zishu replied, "Yeah... out there I may have one foot in the grave, but in here I’ll kick your ass without breaking a sweat. You watch yourself." 

Chengling blinked owlishly, like he wasn't sure whether Zhou Zishu was joking. (That was fine, Zhou Zishu wasn't actually sure whether Zhou Zishu was joking, either.)

A musical laugh signaled Wen Kexing's approach. "A-Xu, you should try to teach him to move like you!” he called, butting his way into the conversation without so much as a ‘good morning.’ “He’s coming to this so late, surely he could benefit from studying with an expert in the field."

“Could he now?” Zhou Zishu replied, gritting his teeth in annoyance.  

Damn that Wen Kexing, and damn Chengling's hopeful, bright puppy dog eyes. 

The absolute last thing that Zhou Zishu wanted and needed right now was a damned apprentice. This was sabotage -- a conspiracy! Zhou Zishu was a dead man, for god's sake.

He opened his mouth to say as much… but in the end he found he couldn’t bear to let the kid down.

Fuck. 

And so of course he tried to teach him a few simple strikes and parries. Kids stuff, you know? The basics. 

It did not go well. 

“Chengling, stop that," Wen Kexing gasped out between side-splitting bouts of laughter while Zhou Zishu glared daggers at them both, "what are you doing? Why are you interfacing with your environment like that? Just try to forget that you’re not in realspace. The more natural your movements are the better off you’ll be, just stop trying so hard you silly brat." 

Wen Kexing grimaced and observed that this may actually be a hopeless case. But, truly, in this day and age navigating the Jianghu was a survival skill. So, in the end Zhou Zishu set the brat up in his room at the inn with some training simulations, doing physical challenges to boost his agility and teach him how to move properly. He told himself it was just because it would be irresponsible to bring an inexperienced user into the network without remedial training on how to be safe. He very studiously ignored the soft amusement that kept making his lips twitch at the boy's over-eager, utterly disastrous attempts at the exercises. He was awful, yes, but already improving, and he was clearly very smart, despite his naivete.

Not that Zhou Zishu was going to be the one to tell him so. 

"You're an embarrassment," he grumbled aloud, utterly deadpan. Chengling looked mortified.

"Get out of my face and go try to learn something useful while the grownups figure out our next steps," Zhou Zishu barked. Wen Kexing giggles, though it was anyone's guess as to whether that was because of the despairing look on the boy's face, or at being called a "grownup." Both options were hilarious to consider, actually.

Stricken but determined, Chengling fled into the simulation. Zhou Zishu swallowed hard on a laugh at his hasty retreat.

Good. At least that’s handled for a moment. Now it’s time for some fucking answers. 

As soon as Chengling was out of sight, Zhou Zishu turned on his heel with a calculating smile and cornered Wen Kexing. He demanded to know how it was even possible that he had been in touch with legendary hacker Ye Baiyi, as he’d claimed the day before. 

Wen Kexing flashed his oiliest smile and purred, “Now, A-Xu, why on Earth would you want to waste valuable time talking about that old coot?” 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, and pressed ahead, “None of that! You distracted me yesterday, but it won’t work again. You can’t just name-drop that eccentric bastard like it’s normal -– no one has seen or heard from him in literal decades. I’m not going another fucking step with you until you explain why you think we might find useful intel at Dragon Pool.”

Wen Kexing looked thoughtful for a long moment, then curious, “A-Xu, are you sure it won’t work again? Distracting you, I mean? I’m very, very distracting.”

Zhou Zishu gave him a flat glare.

Wen Kexing pouted at his intransigence, and batted his eyes, asking, “Don’t you trust me?”

“No.”

That earned him a shocked gasp. Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes.

“I’m wounded!” Wen Kexing exclaimed, waxing histrionic. “A-Xu is so suspicious. Surely, you can see I've done nothing but help you since we met!” 

"That is exactly my point!" Zhou Zishu snapped with narrowed eyes. "Who does that? No one. Give me one reason why I should trust you. You never did tell me why you and that Gu Xiang of yours were over at Mirror Lake in the first place. ‘Serendipity’ like that is awfully suspicious, don't you think?"

Wen Kexing smiled and proceeded to patiently explain, as though talking to a child, that he had heard gossip about the massacre online and had come to Mirror Lake to investigate, to see if it was true. 

Zhou Zishu raised an eyebrow -- Wen Kexing must be aware that it was absurd to claim that he could have gotten there so fast, when even the authorities hadn't even heard yet. No one could react so quickly if they hadn’t been involved. But he didn’t say that out loud. It was a circumstantial accusation at best, and he already understood enough about Wen Kexing to know he'll be good at weaseling his way out of anything flimsier than cold, hard proof of his involvement.

The thing was that despite all of his accusations, deep down the actual reason Zhou Zishu didn’t care to press the issue is because he didn’t believe that Wen Kexing did it. There was something off about the guy, sure, but he just didn’t seem like the type. Call it a hunch. A gut feeling. And Zhou Zishu had always trusted his gut. 

Yeah, sure, he taunted himself in the privacy of his own head, because it's your gut you're thinking with, right now.

"Bullshit," Zhou Zishu dismissed Wen Kexing with another eye roll, "I'm a broken down mess waiting to die, there's nothing interesting about me." 

"You do try very hard to make sure everyone thinks that, don't you?" Wen Kexing observed. "But, you see, the fact that you want people to look at you and see nothing interesting, makes you the most interesting person I've ever met." 

Zhou Zishu didn’t dignify that with a reply, just stared icily in silence until Wen Kexing caved and continued. 

"I did stay for you, A-Xu, that much is true. And I'm still sure that no matter how plain your avatar is, the man behind it is the most beautiful I've ever seen. But. It was mostly the kid." 

"Chengling? Why?" 

"You're helping him." 

"So?"

"So," Wen Kexing replied, mimicking Zhou Zishu’s annoyed tone, "do you have any idea how fascinating that is? The boy can do nothing for you. There's no plausible benefit whatsoever to you, for helping him. There were a hundred less dangerous, less complicated ways for you to ingratiate yourself to Zhao Jing enough for him to give you some of that tech he's been working on, to help with your pain. I just can't figure out why you'd bother helping the kid in the first place."

Zhou Zishu's dour mask slipped a bit as he looked up into Wen Kexing's face and saw nothing but complete sincerity. 

"Fuck, Lao Wen," he said finally, "that's too bleak. You talk like you've never once experienced human kindness in your life. It's not that weird, even in this day and age. He's only a kid, and he's lost everything. Who wouldn't want to help him?" 

Wen Kexing's smile faded, and Zhou Zishu feels suddenly like he said the wrong thing. 

"Plenty of people wouldn't," Wen Kexing murmured with a sad, small frown. Then he blinked and, like a glitch in a video, the frown was gone, his obnoxious, dazzling smile snapping back into place on his stupid, perfect face, "which is, of course, why I must stay with my A-Xu! I have clearly found one of the few, good men. I surely must keep him." 

"You're barking up the wrong tree, you lunatic," Zhou Zishu grumbled, ducking out of the way when Wen Kexing reached for him.

"A-Xu can protest all he likes. If he did not like me around, he would have tried much harder to get rid of me." 

"And I will, if you don't answer my fucking question. What the hell is your deal?" 

Wen Kexing stilled for a moment, appraising. "I haven't been bullshitting you," he said finally. "Everything I've told you is true. It's not the whole truth, but you aren't giving me that either, are you?"

Zhou Zishu took a moment to study Wen Kexing's too-pretty face, weighing his next words carefully in his mind.

"I had a respectable job for years, doing the dirty work for the government," he said at last. "It was brutal and it killed my soul and then it killed me. Might as well do one good deed on my way out, right? I’ll find a way to get the kid somewhere safe. Maybe it'll help balance out some of the awful things I've done in the afterlife." 

"You believe in an afterlife?" Wen Kexing seemed amused. 

"No," Zhou Zishu admitted.

They both burst out laughing,.

"I knew you were soft-hearted," Wen Kexing accused after they've settled, “which is why I thought you were a code entity at first. Humans never do things that don’t benefit themselves." 

Zhou Zishu turned away, embarrassed. 

"But," Wen Kexing went on, "in the end, you're the nice one, aren't you? I'm only helping Chengling because he reminds me of myself. I'm just... I'm the selfish, human one, between us."

Zhou Zishu raised his brows, but did not speak.

“It’s the same thing,” Wen Kexing continued, like a difficult confession, one where it's difficult to form the words. “The reason I was in Mirror Lake – the thing that’s putting Chengling in danger. It’s all the same. I’m trying to solve a murder mystery from a long time ago. Whoever killed my— the same people are looking for Zhang Chengling.” 

“You’re sure about that?” Zhou Zishu asked. He could hear the gaps in the story here, could understand there was a huge amount that still wasn't being said. But what Wen Kexing was saying felt real, and that wasn’t nothing.

Wen Kexing smiled wryly, and vowed, "I’d stake my life on it."

“And Ye Baiyi?” Zhou Zishu pressed again. “You can’t just drop a name like that these days and not explain yourself, no matter how well connected and rich you are.”  

Wen Kexing’s smile widened, “God, that insufferable old queen! Let’s just say he has a vested personal interest in this criminal being caught.”

Zhou Zishu’s skepticism must have shown on his face. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Wen Kexing said, holding his hands up in surrender, “he hasn’t been active in years, won’t spend time in the network, one of the last holdouts protesting the AI takeover. He’s honestly the most obnoxious person I’ve ever spoken to. But I have spoken to him; you can find anything and anyone online if you’re patient enough. So yes, I’ve been emailing with him –- real, vintage email, can you imagine? -– and he says all of his intel from twenty years ago points straight back to Dragon Pool.”

Zhou Zishu couldn't completely hide how impressed he was at this revelation, and Wen Kexing gave him a pleased smile. 

“But,” Zhou Zishu extrapolated, “Rumor has it that Dragon Pool is only accessible in the Jianghu via a single password protected door. So, we can’t remote into their servers.”

Wen Kexing nodded, and confirms, “Exactly.”

Zhou Zishu sighed, feeling like he was about to jump off a fucking cliff in a mockery of the world’s most idiotic trust fall. He already knew what he was about to say, and he was furious at himself about it. But he was too nosy, too invested in Zhang Chengling and, yes, too fucking intrigued by this shady Wen Kexing bastard to step away. 

“Fine,” he spat out.

“What?” Wen Kexing blinked, evidently surprised. 

“I said, fine. Let’s do it. It’s a shitty lead, but it’s a lead, which is more than I had yesterday. Let’s go to fucking Dragon Pool, and see what we can find.” 

Wen Kexing’s smile was as bright as the sun, and Zhou Zishu abruptly wanted to punch him in the face about it, actually. 

“A-Xu, really?”

“Shut up. We can leave when the kid is done with his workout, as long as you just shut the fuck up.”

(Wen Kexing did not shut up.)

(Zhou Zishu went with him anyway.)

Chapter Text

Wen Kexing had picked the nearest inn for their rendezvous, but it seemed it would still take more than a day to reach the door they needed to get into Dragon Pool. They opted to do the trip in two legs, walking the first half that afternoon, then retiring early to camp out under the stars.

As they hiked, Wen Kexing ran his mouth as usual, evidently talking just to fill the silence. Most of it was meaningless noise, as far as Zhou Zishu could tell, but among the incessant patter there were a few pointed comments with subtle barbs. For example, he had just mused aloud to himself that it was obvious when he paused to think about it that Zhou Zishu wasn’t a code entity, you see, because Zhou Zishu actively wanted to die, whereas even the simplest code consciousness had the instinct to fight to survive.

The observation made Zhou Zishu feel seen, and not in a good way. But why the fuck should he care what Wen Kexing thought of him? They barely knew each other, after all. And who cared if his avatar was hot? Anyone's avatar could be hot; that had no bearing at all on what he would actually look like in real life.

Still, Zhou Zishu found himself engaging with the obvious bait, despite himself.  

"What’s so great that it's worth bothering to survive for?" he grunted defensively. "Save your pep talks for people who’ve seen less of the world than me, who haven't figured out there's nothing out there anymore but broken people and pain." 

Wen Kexing sighed and studied him, searching. "A-Xu... Is it really so bad out there?"

Zhou Zishu snorted, "Oh, sure, act like you don’t know. You’re not that naïve, are you Lao Wen?"

Wen Kexing looked troubled but didn't answer, and instead, for the first time in hours he fell silent. It turned out Zhou Zishu liked the quiet even less than Wen Kexing's talking.

They made camp as the sun began to dip behind the trees, and sat around the fire sharing the snacks from Zhou Zishu’s pack. 

“Why do we need to eat in here?” Chengling wanted to know. “Aren’t our bodies being sustained in realspace?”

Zhou Zishu smiled and explained, “Your brain wants all this to be real. Studies have proven that you stay healthier there if you follow normal routines here. It’s less of a mind-fuck for your psyche to process, or something.”

“Also,” Wen Kexing added, “humans in general find the act of sharing a meal together to be comforting, reassuring, and enjoyable. It’s an integral part of the human experience. It doesn’t make sense to deprive yourselves of such a simple pleasure. These are the things that keep people civilized, make them happy.” 

“Family,” Chengling murmured, getting a little misty eyed at the word. 

Poor kid, Zhou Zishu thought. God, talking about broken people and pain… Chengling had really been dealt a shitty hand. 

Wen Kexing nodded kindly at Chengling, then he and Zhou Zishu both averted their eyes. They didn’t want to insult him by telling him it was all going to be okay. It wouldn’t, of course. The world was shit. Life was unfair. Saying anything else would just be lying, b ut the truth was hard, and having to accept it still sucked. Better to just give the kid some space and privacy to feel whatever it is he needs to feel.

Between the morning’s exercise, the long walk, his grief, and the mental burden of his first, long-term stint in cyberspace, Chengling was asleep that evening almost before his head hit his pillow, abruptly enough that Zhou Zishu took a moment to stealthily check his vitals from the feed back in realspace, just to confirm he wasn’t ill. 

That left Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing sitting together in the artificial moonlight, glancing up at stars they’d never be able to see in the real world –- too much light and air pollution, these days.

It wasn’t an awkward silence. Zhou Zishu felt quite comfortable with this strange man, surprisingly so. It was, however, an extremely tense silence. Now that the sun had set Zhou Zishu couldn’t help but think of how they parted ways the last time Chengling was sleeping. Judging by the way Wen Kexing was staring at him, like Zhou Zishu was some kind of bug under a microscope, he was thinking about exactly the same thing.

It wasn’t until their eyes met that Zhou Zishu realized he'd been staring back the whole time. Embarrassed, he opened his mouth to make some sort of joke, trade insults, anything to diffuse the situation. But somehow between the space of one blink and the next, he found himself with a lap full of Wen Kexing. 

Fuck, how does he move so damn fast? 

Zhou Zishu was startled enough that he was too slow to counterbalance the added weight, and fell flat on his back onto the ground. Wen Kexing fell with him, gracefully catching himself on his hands, looming over Zhou Zishu, grinning at him like a wolf.

"What the fuck are you doing, you lunatic?" Zhou Zishu hissed, cutting his eyes over to Chengling's sleeping form. "You're going to wake him up!" 

Wen Kexing smirked, insufferably smug, and god dammit Zhou Zishu hated himself for finding that cocksure arrogance so fucking sexy. 

"I'm certainly not going to wake him," Wen Kexing purred, crawling forward to brace his hands on either side of Zhou Zishu's head, nipping at his earlobe, "I'm just going to kiss you. If you can't keep quiet. Well... that's your problem, isn't it?"

Zhou Zishu narrowed his eyes in annoyance. He was opening his mouth to tell Wen Kexing off, he really was, but he was completely derailed the instant their mouths met. 

Holy shit. 

It was just a kiss. It... it was a chaste kiss. Wen Kexing wasn't even using his tongue. So how the actual hell did he have Zhou Zishu nerves lit up like a damn fireworks display? Against his will, Zhou Zishu’s body shuddered and arched up into Wen Kexing's. His skin erupted in goosebumps like someone was raking long, sharp nails gently down his back. The sensation was overwhelmingly erotic, but Wen Kexing's hands were still planted on the ground -- Zhou Zishu could see them in his peripheral vision. 

How is he even doing this? 

Zhou Zishu didn’t have a chance to wonder for long, though, because the sensation faded into the back of his awareness as another overwhelmed it -- a syrupy, heavy warmth like he was sinking into a hot spring or an old fashioned bathtub, the decadent kind that used gallons and gallons of real water. As soon as he had that thought, he could have sworn he smelled the sandalwood bath oil he'd used back in the day when he cared enough to blow good money on such trivial luxuries. 

Lazy and slow, the sensory experience was a bit like the feeling he used to get sometimes when he was really high, simultaneously inside and outside of his own body, oversensitive but also like he was floating in a void where the edges of his physical form blurred until he became one with his surroundings, and glowing from within.

Then the contrasting sensations were competing for his attention -- the sharp, shivery awareness of his skin that set his toes and fingertips to tingling, mixed with the warm, languid fuzziness of floating somewhere warm. It felt like all the best parts of mixing uppers and downers, actually, and it took Zhou Zishu's breath away. 

He gasped, and his voice was rough and husky when he growled into Wen Kexing's mouth, "How the hell are you getting in my head like this?" 

He felt Wen Kexing smile against his lips. "I've never met anyone I couldn't eventually hack," he murmured, low and dangerous. "You're good, A-Xu, I’ll give you that, but I'm the best." 

"You think so, do you?" Zhou Zishu retorted with bravado he didn’t feel. 

"I do," Wen Kexing agreed easily, "because this is barely scratching the surface." With that he rolled his hips. 

"Fuck you," Zhou Zishu gritted out through his teeth, clenching his jaw to swallow a moan. 

"Tsk, tsk," Wen Kexing teased, "not now, gorgeous. Not in front of the children."

Zhou Zishu's scowl deepened and he turned his head away to collect himself, but Wen Kexing turned his face back with one long-fingered hand and looked deep into his eyes with that uncanny-valley stare of his. He didn't speak again, but he leaned forward, brushing his lips feather-light against Zhou Zishu's, then nipping softly at Zhou Zishu's lower lip with his teeth. Each touch sent a new, impossibly intense shiver rippling through Zhou Zishu, radiating from his jaw all the way through his entire body. 

He'd have been utterly embarrassed at the whimpers that kept escaping his lips, at how hard he was now just from a few kisses, but he was too busy losing his mind. He wasn’t sure when his hands had moved up to cling to Wen Kexing's back and shoulders, nor when his legs had moved to pull Wen Kexing's pelvis flush against his. They were grinding against each other fully clothed like fucking teenagers. How the hell was this so good? 

"Tell me to stop, A-Xu," Wen Kexing whispered low. "If you don't want this, you have to tell me."

Zhou Zishu was absolutely furious at the suggestion. He surged up and locked his teeth into Wen Kexing's neck hard enough to hurt, hard enough that he would have broken the skin, if they were in realspace. He snarled like an animal and Wen Kexing moaned. 

"Fuck you," Zhou Zishu repeated, relishing the guttural harshness of the words, "you think I can't take you? You think you're special? You don't know a damn thing about me. I could have had a dozen men as good as you." 

Wen Kexing's eyes flashed dangerously, and he murmured, "You're lying. And it's good you are. Because if you weren't, I'd kill them all." 

Zhou Zishu took a moment to be disgusted with himself when that terrifying little declaration only made his cock throb. 

"What makes you think I'd let you?" he goaded, reckless. "What makes you think you could stop me?" 

Wen Kexing growled, gripping him tighter and leaning in to kiss him again. There was nothing gentle or chaste about this kiss, nor the accompanying sensations that Wen Kexing somehow managed to elicit as he played Zhou Zishu's nervous system like some kind of virtuoso. The feeling of nails raking over skin intensified until Zhou Zishu felt like he was being clawed open by ghostly hands, and the warm, sinking, floating feeling left him gasping, drowning in the liquid pull of it. 

Despite how overwhelmed he was Zhou Zishu didn’t feel inclined to panic -- because fuck, it felt so good he can't think. His cock throbbed and Zhou Zishu was truly unaware if his mind was processing the input from his overstimulated Jianghu avatar, or if his physical body was just so turned on he could feel it all the way in here. He let out a keening, whining noise through his nose, too overwrought to care how needy and broken it sounded. 

"Shhhhh," Wen Kexing gentled him, pulling back and grinning at him with kiss bruised lips glistening with saliva, "you'll wake the kid." 

“Seriously?” Zhou Zishu gasped. “You insufferable prick, how fucking dare you–” He was cut off as Wen Kexing slid his thumb from where it still rested against Zhou Zishu's jaw and pushed it into his mouth instead. His eyelashes fluttered when Zhou Zishu bit him.

How has it gone so far so fast? Zhou Zishu wondered frantically as his body writhed, aching, screaming at him with arousal. At least Wen Kexing seemed no better off than him. His eyes looked wild and Zhou Zishu was fairly sure the way he kept grinding his cock against the place where Zhou Zishu's thigh met his hip wasn’t intentional. 

"You fucking tease," Zhou Zishu accused, holding the tip of Wen Kexing's thumb between his teeth, "touch me, you bastard." He was trying to sound threatening. It came off a whole lot more like begging. 

Wen Kexing responded with a low, throaty hum and Zhou Zishu would have sworn he could feel it moving through him: a thrumming, pulsing sort of vibration like the C-string on an antique cello. 

"A-Xu," Wen Kexing admonished, "who's a tease? I would never leave you unsatisfied. You were the one so concerned that the boy might see. I certainly don't care." 

Fuck, he wasn't imagining it. As Wen Kexing kept talking Zhou Zishu concluded that he could, in fact, feel the words reverberating through him, ricocheting through his body and down to the deepest core of him. His body was straining to contain the vibrations, and he felt like he'd burst from the pressure that continued inexorably building inside him. 

"Lao Wen..." he gasped, "What--" 

"A-Xu is cruel," Wen Kexing pouted, and the teasing vibrations of his words drove Zhou Zishu even crazier. "He accuses me of such petty things. I am a gentleman, and I would never, never leave such a beautiful, responsive lover wanting." 

I'm definitely going to die from this, Zhou Zishu concluded. The scratching, stinging tingle on his skin, the expansive sinking and drowning in warmth, the pulsing hum of those maddening vibrations. 

He couldn’t even think. If he didn't know better, he'd have said it was an impending orgasm. But not -- not like the normal heat and pressure he would feel building low in his belly. Not like the aching tightness in his balls and the primal push towards release. This… whatever it was, this was cresting through his whole body. He was shuddering from the building tension. Even the roots of his hair felt poised to break like a wave the indescribable sensation threatened to pull him under. 

"Lao Wen," he panted, struggling to form words. "Please, I-- what do you want from me?"

Wen Kexing laughed, a joyful, mercurial sound. It rippled through Zhou Zishu and he cried out from the assault as the clarion notes bubbled up inside him, too bright, too big. Aching .

"I want everything from you," Wen Kexing whispered, leaning close to bite at Zhou Zishu's ear. Zhou Zishu arched up against him helplessly, clawing at his shoulders and pulling him close, clinging to him like a life preserver in a stormy ocean. He'd definitely gone insane. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He was probably dying, actually. What a way to go. 

"But mostly," Wen Kexing murmured, and Zhou Zishu couldn't handle the low baritone stirring the heat and pressure in him a second longer. Gasping, he felt himself sob as the pressure overwhelmed him. "Mostly,” Wen Kexing repeated, “I want to see you come.”

As Wen Kexing spoke he pulled back just far enough to look Zhou Zishu right in the eye. His gaze was dark, feverish, bordering on desperate. 

Fuck. FUCKKKKKKKKK. 

The simple words ripped through Zhou Zishu like a gunshot as soon as his brain processed their meaning. And then he was lost. The impossible, swirling kaleidoscope of sensations melted in on him and he felt himself coming apart at the seams, gasping, mouth open and head thrown back on a silent scream, clinging with white knuckles to Wen Kexing's virtual body as he came harder than he ever had in his life. (His vision literally went white -- he thought that was just a metaphor, what the hell? That was a thing that could happen?) And then for a blissful, serene moment, there was simply nothing.

*********

When Zhou Zishu drifted back to himself he had no idea how long he'd been lying there on the ground, no clue at all whether he'd managed to stay quiet throughout… whatever it was that just happened. He’d worry it was all just a mind trick, except his throat hurt like he’d been screaming, and he was panting for air and still couldn’t feel his toes.

He opened his eyes and found Wen Kexing staring at him smugly. For once, Zhou Zishu couldn’t even find it in himself to be annoyed. This was unequivocally the best sex he’d ever had and no one even touched his dick. Fuck, he was still wearing all his clothes! Maybe the man deserved to feel a little smug.

“Do you need…” he mumbled, half-incoherent, gesturing vaguely towards Wen Kexing’s pelvis.

Wen Kexing shook his head.  “I’m. Good. Good, thank you,” He sounded breathless and a little insane. 

Oh no, he’s cute. Fuck.

Zhou Zishu was reeling. He felt like he’d been peeled open so that Wen Kexing could see all of his soft squishy inside bits like some kind of citrus fruit. It was an unsettling feeling and he wanted to be embarrassed, but Wen Kexing wasn’t mocking him, or making him nervous. In fact, he kept looking at Zhou Zishu like he was something special. The poor idiot must have been at least as overwhelmed as Zhou Zishu felt, to have starry eyes over someone like him.

Zhou Zishu felt Wen Kexing move to get up and some involuntary impulse made him reach up and grab for his wrist before he could stand. 

“Stay,” he offered, trying to make it sound like a casual suggestion.

Wen Kexing sat up and looked down at him. Zhou Zishu turned his head to look back. Wen Kexing’s lips were swollen and his hair was an absolute mess from Zhou Zishu’s hands pulling at it. His stupid, perfect face looked perplexed. 

“Here?” he gestured at Zhou Zishu’s bedroll with apparent confusion.

Wow. Really? Okay, then… Zhou Zishu scowled, abruptly feeling wrong footed and sullen. 

“Never mind,” he dismissed, waving his hand and letting Wen Kexing’s arm go, “you don’t have to.” He settled down and threw an arm over his eyes, very deliberately not sulking . 

Fuck this. ( He had no idea what made him offer in the first place.) (That was a lie.) 

Wen Kexing, however, didn’t go to make his retreat. Zhou Zishu heard him take a deep breath, and cracked open one eye to look at him expectantly.

“I mean. Sure,” Wen Kexing said slowly, “I can stay. But why would you want me to?”

What an idiot. 

Huffing, Zhou Zishu grabbed his arm again and jerked, pulling him back down so that they were laying on their sides, face to face. Wen Kexing startled, eyes wide. 

“What’s your deal?” Zhou Zishu asked. “You chase me around all day and then the minute you’ve got my attention you want to leave. Fuck, you haven't even gotten me naked yet. Isn’t this where you wanted to be?” 

Wen Kexing blinked, but didn't reply. He looked like he was thinking very, very hard about something.

That’s never good, Zhou Zishu sighed. I m ust have misread this. Whatever. 

“Look,” he backtracked, “Forget it. If the answer to that question is no, it’s–-”

“No! It’s not no. It’s okay. It’s-– It’s nice. But… ah… aren’t you worried the kid will see us?”

What the fuck. 

Zhou Zishu had to laugh. “Lao Wen, you’re such a fucking clown. You think he’d give a damn if he saw us sleeping next to each other? You sure as hell weren’t worried much about him ten minutes ago, were you? Don’t be an idiot. Anyway, he’s a teenager, remember? There’s no way he’ll wake before us.” 

“Really?”

“Of course not. Don’t you remember being that age?” 

Wen Kexing gave a self deprecating chuckle and admitted, “I guess I must not.”

Zhou Zishu shook his head softly, “You madman.” 

Then he smiled -– blame it on the endorphins -– and rolled over to sleep. He drifted off thinking of the last expression he saw on Wen Kexing’s face: his responding smile, looking at Zhou Zishu’s scruffy, unshaven avatar like he could see straight through it, and like Zhou Zishu was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. 

God, this guy really is a lunatic.  

Chapter Text

The next day found them on the road again, making good time over easy terrain. Zhou Zishu almost wished they were dealing with more obstacles because he couldn't stop thinking about the night before. What he and Wen Kexing had shared was simply indescribable. World shattering. Mind bending. Fucking hot. 

He couldn’t stop wondering what kind of man would devote the time and energy it would take to learn such incredibly specialized hacking techniques, who expended the effort to learn how to get in another person’s mind and make them come so hard they stopped breathing, without so much as a single physical touch. Zhou Zishu wanted to mock him, to call him a creep and a pervert. He’s always hated coding fetishists, people who get off on the science of it. Conversations with people like that have always made him feel slightly violated once they realize how good he is at his work – too invasive, and objectifying in a strange way. 

The fact remained, however, that Zhou Zishu didn’t hate Wen Kexing at all. On the contrary he was, much to his own horror, starting to be utterly obsessed with him. He couldn’t stop thinking about how he wanted to meet Wen Kexing in realspace, and he’d never wanted that from anyone before. It felt new. Exciting. It was fascinating, to have such a sense of fascination. But... whatever. It wasn't like it fucking mattered. 

There was no time for Zhou Zishu to turn over any new leaves, or change his bad habits of judgemental solitude, or anything else. His body was failing. He was fucking dying, and it was his own damn fault, and anyone who had ever stuck around long enough to understand that in the past, had the good sense to run for the hills. Who would ever want to get involved with a mess like him, with a looming expiration date?

He was startled from his navel gazing by an overly familiar hand teasing at the edge of his jaw. 

Well at least there's no chance of this idiot having good sense, Zhou Zishu thought to himself as he swatted the offending hand away and "tsk’d" at him through his teeth.

"Cut that shit out, you fucking pest!" he chastised aloud. 

Wen Kexing beamed at him radiantly and replied, "I just can't stop wondering what you look like under this illusion you've created. You can't possibly be more lovely than the code you've written, but... I still can't help myself. I want to know every part of A-Xu." 

"What are you talking about? It's just a standard avatar." 

Wen Kexing gave him a pointed smile, and countered, "Ah, that may work on the other boys, A-Xu, but you know it won't work on me. Not when I've been inside you, like I have." 

Zhou Zishu was glad his avatar couldn't blush. Blushing at a line like that would be too embarrassing to survive.

"I thought I told you to cut that out!" he scolded instead, "if the brat hears you talking like that, you better be prepared to tell him all about the birds and the bees and the bytes because I'm sure as fuck not doing it."

Wen Kexing ignored him completely except to put on what must have been the most pathetic pout in internet history, begging, "Let me see your face?"

"No."

"I won't stop trying," Wen Kexing warned with a dark smile, "and we both know I've already hacked your firewall at least once. At least."

"I didn't expect you would stop trying," Zhou Zishu smiled back, patting Wen Kexing's cheek as though patronizing a small child, "I've always had shit luck."

Wen Kexing turned and placed a kiss on Zhou Zishu's palm before he could take his hand away. Zhou Zishu couldn't repress a shiver, then responded to Wen Kexing's knowing smirk with a scathing glare, moving to find Chengling up ahead, resolving internally to do some back-end work and reconfigure his code to reinforce security as soon as he had a spare minute.

Wen Kexing put a hand on his shoulder to prevent his retreat. Zhou Zishu slapped him away again. Undeterred, Wen Kexing reached out to grab him and Zhou Zishu swept his leg, making him stumble. It devolved from there into some extremely childish grappling. Zhou Zishu knew very well it was beneath his dignity, but he was enjoying himself far too much to stop. It was a satisfyingly well matched fight. 

Wen Kexing was fun to spar with, quick and unpredictable. He was also a horrible cheat, which was a trait Zhou Zishu approved of. At one point Zhou Zishu was able to use his superior speed to catch Wen Kexing off guard, and it looked like he was on the verge of taking the upper hand, but at that exact moment Zhou Zishu started feeling… tingles.

No... it wasn't his imagination. He was feeling tingles that made his whole body shiver every time Wen Kexing grabbed his hands. The tingles were suspiciously like the rippling, roiling pleasure he had felt last night, in Wen Kexing’s arms. 

This absolute bastard, Zhou Zishu thought, furious, he’s fucking weaponized it. How fucking dare he? I’m really gonna kill him. 

He narrowed his eyes in accusation but Wen Kexing only laughed. Zhou Zishu could feel the sound sparking along his nerves all the way down to his fingertips, no doubt a side effect to whatever Wen Kexing was doing to his senses. It felt like the aftershocks of an orgasm, and it made focusing on their fight incredibly challenging. 

Fuck.

Zhou Zishu was used to fighting at a disadvantage. He did so every time he had to fight in realspace, ever since the mods started to prove incompatible with his own immune system. He was weary from how accustomed he was to fighting in pain, sluggish, or half conscious. This was not that. This was nothing like that. 

The closer he got to Wen Kexing, the more the hum of pleasure increased. Every time Zhou Zishu managed to land a blow, his eyes nearly whited out with pleasure. 

This is fucking rude, that’s what this is. What a fucking undignified way to try and win! 

Undignified, yes, but it was undeniably working. Zhou Zishu was definitely losing at this point. Adding insult to injury, his cock was rock hard, and he was blushing like a teenager after his first wet dream, and the whole time Wen Kexing was just standing there, smug as anything, staring at him like some kind of classical artwork, unnerving and unblinking. His cool, collected demeanor only served to make Zhou Zishu both angrier and hornier. 

Fucking hell. 

Zhou Zishu did not back down. (He never has been good at yielding a fight, especially when it would be a terrible idea to keep going. What the fuck should be different about today?) But given his current levels of distraction, the fight was growing increasingly difficult to maintain, as though he was being made to fight with a vibrator inside him, except the closer he got to his opponent, the more intense the sensations grew, and every inch of his skin became as sensitive as his prostate. 

Nevertheless, through a haze of arousal Zhou Zishu doubled down with narrowed eyes and rounded on Wen Kexing, grappling with him through the handicap of his own pleasure. Now he had something to prove. 

Bring it on, you flamboyant fucker.

Bursts of sensation erupted along his nerves, each wave good enough that he wanted to moan. The heady pleasure was entirely incongruous with how annoyed he felt, leaving him both confused and breathless.

“What the fuck are you doing to me, you pervert?” he asked when they paused for a moment face to face.

“I’m a pervert?” Wen Kexing teased. “You’re enjoying it. Besides, I’m not even touching you, one could argue you’re doing this to yourself.”

It was unfortunately true. If Zhou Zishu stopped hitting Wen Kexing the sensations would all recede. But, of course, that would mean admitting defeat. 

Fuck that.

Zhou Zishu glared and attacked again. Wen Kexing, maddeningly unfazed and almost amused at Zhou Zishu’s efforts, blocked and parried every blow with almost no apparent effort. 

Wen Kexing only laughed.

Who does this bastard think he is? Zhou Zishu wondered furiously. 

Zhou Zishu knew he should stop. He was stumbling like a drunk now, disoriented from the onslaught of stimulation. But he was tired of being toyed with, tired of Wen Kexing’s teasing, of feeling like there’s a big important joke he’s not in on. Tired of feeling like Wen Kexing was holding all the cards and that Zhou Zishu was just some kind of player in his game. So he kept going, eyes flashing with aggression and teeth clenched against the overwhelming waves of desire. 

He kept going right up until the moment when he threw a particularly hard punch and found himself overbalanced and, embarrassingly, too disoriented from the pleasure suffusing his body to catch himself. 

His eyes widened as he started to fall and Wen Kexing reflexively grabbed him around the waist as though to steady him. Zhou Zishu stumbled into Wen Kexing, catching him around the neck, not thinking of the implications given the game they were currently playing. 

And… that’s all it took. 

Light exploded behind Zhou Zishu’s eyelids when all of a sudden, everything that was building within him overflowed, fractured, and shattered. He was lost in the flood as his body screamed at him, incoherent thoughts of, yes, no too good, too much, don’t stop, I can’t… The pleasure that had been teasing and tormenting his body with every brush of his skin against Wen Kexing exploded behind his eyes as he collapsed into the taller man’s arms, white hot and shocking in its intensity. Convulsing and gasping he came, an overwhelming orgasmic rush that had him arching his back and clinging to Wen Kexing like a lifeline, face buried in his neck to muffle the strangled cry that tore its way out of his throat.

Wen Kexing shivered, then swore under his breath as he pulled Zhou Zishu closer, steadying and protective. 

Zhou Zishu blinked up and examined those dark eyes which were so wide and fathomless with desire. Wen Kexing didn’t look smug or haughty anymore. He looked overwhelmed, completely bowled over as though something about this was too much for him to handle, too. 

“A-Xu,” he croaked, raspy and dry, “are you okay? I didn’t mean to—“

But before they could really get into it, Chengling ran back to them saying he thought he saw something in the distance.

Breathing hard, Zhou Zishu pushed Wen Kexing away and let the boy guide him to point at a shadowy structure on the horizon. He turned his wide eyes to Zhou Zishu, who nodded in confirmation. 

“Yep, you’re right kid. We’re here.” 

*********

Dragon Pool certainly lived up to its terrifying reputation, Zhou Zishu thought as they made their way inside the rusted door and into a long, narrow hall that looked like some kind of nightmarish, steampunk mashup of the works of M.C. Escher and William Gibson. Twisting hallways to nowhere, optical illusions, trap doors, booby traps, and secret passages. He counted at least a dozen different hazards in the first room alone, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d noticed everything that must be concealed in there. 

“Be careful,” he warned Chengling, reaching past him to disarm a spring that was set to release projectiles at their torsos when they walked past. “Stay close, and whatever you do, don’t fucking touch anything .” 

Chengling nodded emphatically, eyes as wide as saucers.

The Dragon Pool labyrinth was a game master’s dream – a palace of puzzles and tests and feats of both mental and physical agility. In its heyday it had been touted as the magnum opus of its reclusive creator, Long Que, whose skill at rendering and animation had shaped the entire face of virtual reality. The landscape that they’d been traveling through wouldn’t have existed without Long Que’s contribution, and now that Zhou Zishu was here, he realized that The Jianghu at large was, compared to this… peanuts. Fucking peanuts. 

They were damn lucky that it seemed the bulk of the features and functions of the space were offline. 

“What happened here?” Zhou Zishu muttered under his breath. There were signs of violence everywhere.

“Nothing good,” Wen Kexing said, voice unusually affected. Zhou Zishu turned to steal a quick look and was unsettled to find Wen Kexing looking drawn and disturbed. 

Their exploration led them to a room that appeared to be a research or medical lab, where they discovered two bodies long dead. The older, larger body was presumably Long Que, if the ID in his pocket could be trusted. He had been tied up and tortured, legs cut off at the knee. A smaller, slightly disfigured corpse lay on the floor nearby. That was bound to have been Long Xiao, who had chronically been in very poor health from everything Zhou Zishu had read about the family.

Looks like the kid had heart failure, Zhou Zishu concluded silently, which could have been due to a physical struggle. This seems like murder, then accidental suicide? 

"How could something like this even happen?" Chengling wondered aloud to himself. Zhou Zishu sighed. He hated that he'd found himself in the position to be the one destroying this boy's sense of innocence. But lying to him would only be a disservice.

"Kid, look, not everyone has the relationship with their dad that you did." Chengling's face went white with horror as the implication of Zhou Zishu's words sank in.

"A-Xu? Over here."

Wen Kexing led them to a small array of displays wired to some security cameras in the room, which seemed to have been an old medical lab. The cameras were running along with a few other security features on a solar powered battery, siloed off from the rest of Dragon Pool's network. Zhou Zishu switched on the console and did a search for footage starting on the last day listed on the paper notebook that contained Long Xiao's research notes. It didn't take them long to find footage that corroborated Zhou Zishu's understanding of the situation.

Long Xiao and his father shouted at each other over the grainy footage. Long Xiao was dying, knew he only had a few weeks left to live. But he simply refused to be uploaded and rendered indefinitely digital, demanding an artificial body from his father. But the tech had been far too new back then and Long Que had refused, insisting it was unsafe and that more testing was needed before that was a viable solution. The kid in his rage had killed his father, and then died from the strain.

Zhou Zishu shut off the monitor when Chengling made a distressed noise, either choking back bile or a sob. He turned next to Wen Kexing and found that he didn't look much better off, face nearly-expressionless and eyes inhumanly flat as he took in the years-old tragedy.

"Why are they still here?" Chengling asked quietly. "There weren't bodies, before, when people died."

"The Jianghu protocol to vanish defunct avatars is new," Wen Kexing said tonelessly. "It went into effect sometime after this, but before you were born, when people... after an incident where there were enough bodies it became too overwhelming to bury them all virtually, as well as physically. These two would vanish if we connected to the main network; the protocol is universally enforced these days." Zhou Zishu remembered that time too well. He'd even voted in favor of passing the statute. What a mess that had been.

"I think," Zhou Zishu said in a deliberately steady tone, "we've seen enough of this room. Let's keep moving." Eventually they fond their way to what appears to be Long Que's personal laboratory. On the table was a PC which would have been top of the line in its day. Zhou Zishu would've bet money that there was an identical model in Dragon Pool's real-space equivalent, probably with an identical pair of father and son bodies, too, though those verisons would be rotting in an inelegantly organic way on the floor.

Shoving that morbid thought out of his mind with a grimace, Zhou Zishu approached the desk to activate the old machine. Slowly, groaning like an arthritic old man, it whirled and chugged its way back to life. Immediately after the boot up sequence was complete, a warning light flashed. 

A tinny, mechanical voice announced, “Network access is for Authorized Users only. Please note that if unauthorized access is detected, or any data is downloaded, the network is set to self destruct.”

Shit.

Zhou Zishu had his hands poised over the keyboard and was scrambling for ideas about how to sidestep the security and hack his way in when the system spoke again, stating, “Authorized User identified. Access granted.”

Zhou Zishu chuckled to himself and decided the system’s brain wave scan must be faulty. He loved it when tech would break in a useful way. 

With a flicker and a quiet chime, the familiar image of a living Long Que appeared. He smiled kindly, and said, "Greetings, my dear boy.”

“Long Bobo!” Zhou Zishu exclaimed, earning himself a surprised look from both Chengling and Wen Kexing. 

The voice, however, did not pause. It took Zhou Zishu a quick moment to realize that he was watching a video, not interfacing with an uploaded consciousness. 

“If you are watching this,” the recording explained, “I regret that the worst has come to pass, and that Zhen Ruyu and Gu Miaomiao have been killed, along with me and my family. First and foremost I want to offer you my deepest condolences. We never meant for any of this to happen.”

“Zhen Ruyu?” Chengling breathed “I know that name. He was friends with my father…” 

Wen Kexing made a stuttering noise, as though he was attempting to speak. When Zhou Zishu glanced over, his avatar was flickering, glitching like he was experiencing some kind of connectivity issue.

“Lao Wen?” Zhou Zishu asked, concerned. 

After another moment Wen Kexing’s avatar reappeared and stayed solid. He waved a dismissive hand, though he looked deeply troubled, and slightly ill. Zhou Zishu wanted to push him a bit, to see what’s wrong, but now was not the time; the recording on the monitor was directing them to a false panel in the wall, where another massive CPU was concealed. This one, when booted according to the recording’s instructions, produced a hologram interface of Long Que for them to converse with properly.

“Greetings and Welcome to Dragon Pool,” the hologram said with a gentle smile. “Is that you, Yan’er?” 

Wen Kexing glitched again, not fading, just dissolving into mild static for a split second before solidifying again where he stood.  

“No, Long Bobo,” Zhou Zishu corrected with a respectful nod of his head, “I’m not sure if you remember me, but I am Zhou Zishu. This is my friend, Wen Kexing.” 

Wen Kexing looked over in mild surprise and Zhou Zishu realized this was the first time he’d ever called Wen Kexing his friend. (He rolled his eyes and flipped Wen Kexing off, just to illustrate that this changed nothing.)

The hologram of Long Que gave first Wen Kexing and then Zhou Zishu a long, searching look. Then, his smile broadened and he said, “Qin Huaizhang’s apprentice! How could I ever forget serious little Zishu. My, but you’ve grown up. How long has it been? What year is it?” 

They spent the first few moments of their conversation catching up, and introducing Zhang Chengling. Long Que was delighted to meet “that hoodlum” Zhang Yusen’s son, but his face fell when Zhou Zishu explained that the boy’s family had been murdered, and that he was with them today because he was on the run from the criminals who had done it. 

Long Que was somber as he explained to them that the prize that was being chased so ruthlessly were the files for a decades-old initiative called The Zhen Yan Project , which was the culmination of Zhen Ruyu’s life’s work. 

Zhou Zishu felt a memory tickling at the back of his mind at that familiar name.

“Zhen Ruyu…” he mused, turning to Long Que to confirm, “If I remember correctly, he and his wife, Gu Miaomiao, were some of the most successful pioneers in artificial intelligence, back in their day. This project you’re describing was one of the major, successful turning points in their work, right?”

Long Que smiled sadly, “Yes, it was a critical step in their research. It was also the reason they were murdered. The Zhen Yan Project came closer than anyone had before – and presumably since, if their work is still so coveted – to creating a fully realized code genome with true, genuine sentience. This was not AI the way people have come to understand it, not a computer taught through machine learning to think like a man. They actually figured out how to create a digital life, almost completely from scratch right down to the architecture of its brain. A Virtual Human, growing up and living and thinking just like any other child. It was truly incredible stuff.”

Zhou Zishu’s eyes widened. That really was incredibly impressive. Even now, decades later, no one had ever come close to such a staggering achievement. No wonder so many people seemed willing to kill even for a chance at recovering those files.

Beside Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing flickered again. Zhou Zishu turned to him, increasingly concerned.

“Why was the project called Zhen Yan?” Wen Kexing asked Long Que quietly, ignoring Zhou Zishu. 

Long Que turned to face him again, and paused as though deep in thought. 

“They named it after their late son,” he finally offered. “Gu Miaomiao insisted. She said that naming the program after the boy would honor his memory, the first and most important life they’d created together. She also hoped the association with their human child would help people to think of the living entities that resulted from their work as people, instead of things, possessions to fight over. She said these AI’s would be ‘babies, not stock options.’” 

Wen Kexing flickered in and out once more. “Well,” he observed, a bit too airy and lighthearted, “It seems like that last goal was over optimistic, hm?”

Zhou Zishu looked at him closely. He did not like seeing Wen Kexing like this. As soon as they were done here, he’d insist on getting this glitching problem checked out. 

“What happened to the program?” Zhou Zishu asked. 

Long Bobo sighed, “I wish I could tell you more, Zishu my boy. But by the end, I know the Zhens weren’t certain about who their friends really were. When we parted ways, we severed ties for their own safety. I haven't spoken to them since they left. It hasn't stopped people from trying to get more information out of me, though.”

“Is that why you’ve been locked up here all this time?” Zhou Zishu asked. “You’re in hiding?”

“It’s because of us,” Zhang Chengling interjected. All three of them turned to face him. Chengling shrugged, looking awkward.

“I mean… Five Lakes, obviously, not the Zhang family. Everyone knows that the Zhen family was close with all the execs of Five Lakes before they died. And everyone knows they had a falling out, too. I’m not sure what happened and it was before I was born, but I’d bet whatever it is, it’s the same reason my father stopped talking to the others when I was a kid.” 

Long Que nodded regretfully. “The reactions to the advancement were truly disturbing. It became clear to the Zhens once they’d created a single entity during beta testing that the public would immediately abuse and warp the technology for horrible, unspeakable things. They decided to destroy all of the records of their project and retire, go into hiding if needed. In the end only one piece of evidence still remained: that single life they built, during testing. As Gu Miaomiao had tried to tell everyone, it was just a child. It was a child learning to talk and reason and grow in its world. And she couldn’t bring herself to terminate the program, when it called her “mom.” 

Both Chengling and Wen Kexing made small noises of distress at that revelation.

“So,” Long Que went on, “they saved him, a single copy without any backups, kept on a physical drive they carried with them in realspace. It was done out of love, but because of their sentimentality this virtual child of theirs turned into some sort of… questing beast, in cyberspace. A myth. A legend, like Christ’s holy grail. The public became obsessed with tracking down this revolutionary technology. 

“The Zhens went into hiding as they’d discussed, for their own protection as well as the new child’s. I helped them escape. And that is how we learned that there is a traitor among the executives of Five Lakes. No one else aside from me knew where they had gone, but someone spilled the secret, and the rumor is that the Zhens paid with their lives, hunted down by an angry mob in realspace. We have never been able to confirm what happened to them, but no one has ever heard a word from them since. The more time passed, the more we started to accept the rumors must be true. There were no backups; they refused. They were here, and then they were just... gone, along with all their work."

“My dad told me the same thing,” Chengling said. 

“But who-–” Wen Kexing started to ask, but was cut off as an alarm started sounding near the door where they’d entered. 

Chengling startled. Zhou Zishu tensed. Wen Kexing’s eyes flashed and he turned to face the rest of them, looking cold as ice. 

“Someone else is here,” he growled, bolting out of the room without another word. By the time Zhou Zishu was able to follow, Wen Kexing’s avatar had vanished into thin air.

Cursing, under his breath, Zhou Zishu returned to the office. 

“It’s the Scorpions.” Long Que told him, looking deadly serious. “Unauthorized access will trigger the self destruct sequence. You need to get the boy out of here. Now.” 

Chapter Text

“Chengling, move,” Zhou Zishu barked over the klaxons sounding in the hallways. But for the first time since they met, the kid didn’t jump to obey. 

“We can’t leave Long Bobo here!” he exclaimed anxiously, eyes comically wide with distress and accusation. 

Fucking hell, as if Zhou Zishu needed another reason to feel like a god damned monster.

“We have to,” Zhou Zishu told him grimly. “We can’t take him. And that’s by his own design. You heard the warning that the whole place will self-destruct if anyone downloads anything.” 

Chengling’s face fell, contorted in grief and anger.

“I’m dead already,” Long Que agreed brusquely. “Listen to your Zishu-shu. You better run while you can, or you’ll be dead, too.” 

Zhou Zishu grabbed the kid by the wrist and pushed him to the door. There he paused and turned, giving Long Que a measured look.

“Tell me what you would do right now, if you had hands?” he asked with a small smile.

Long Que flashed a wide grin and gave Zhou Zishu a fancy, old fashioned bow over his hands. When he lifted his head he narrowed his eyes and said only, “Burn the bastards.” 

Zhou Zishu gave him a cruel, slow smile in return, nodding his agreement. They understood each other perfectly, cagey, jaded bastards that they both were. 

“We won’t be able to take you with us, even then,” Zhou Zishu said softly. “I don’t have the right tools. If we do this, there’s no way you’ll survive it.” 

Long Que waved his hand dismissively. “My time has passed,” he said, and he seemed to be at peace with it.”If I have to go, I want to go out with a bang, as they say.”  

Zhou Zishu nodded. It’s what he would want, in the same position. Fuck a bunch of wasting away into obsolescense. 

Long Que nodded at one of the panels on the wall, and explained, “There’s a datastick in there you can plug into the computer in the other room to activate the defensive protocols. Do it fast, and get out. And Zishu? Get some rest, will you? You look like hell.” 

Zhou Zishu grinned and Long Que laughed, but any more words they might have shared were lost when the unmistakable sound of a battering ram against a metal door cut through the air. 

Zhou Zishu retrieved the datastick, then turned to grab Chengling by the arm. As soon as the drive was plugged in, they started running. 

They made it all the way outside of Dragon Pool before the countdown ended. Even so the explosion, when it came, was quite impressive. Both Zhou Zishu and Chengling were knocked off their feet and the entire matrix of the network interface flickered for a moment with the surge of power. 

For a minute everything just went black. Losing consciousness in the Jianghu was nothing like how it felt in realspace. No nausea, no disorientation, It’s just that for a minute there was nothing. It was pretty peaceful, honestly. Zhou Zishu found he was kind of reluctant to wake up. 

When he did manage to open his eyes and pulled himself to his feet, Wen Kexing was standing in front of him. 

The fucking nerve of some people. 

“Oh! Nice of you to join us! Where the fuck were you?” Zhou Zishu demands with a curl to his lip. “You left us for fucking dead, you piece of shit.” 

“A-Xu, you know I was having… issues. I could see how worried you were. I needed to address them before I could be of any use to you. And you’re fine! I knew you’d be fine.”

“Did you?”

“Of course.” 

Zhou Zishu dropped it because he hated the idea of fighting in front of the kid, not because he bought that idiotic excuse. (And, fine. Maybe, just maybe, he realized that if they’re on the run from the Scorpions, he was better off with Wen Kexing than without him.)

As if on cue, Chengling began to stir beside him. Zhou Zishu gave Wen Kexing a long, appraising stare. Wen Kexing, to his credit, did not flinch. 

“It was the Scorpions,” Zhou Zishu stated without further preamble. 

Wen Kexing nodded, “I figured they were a likely candidate.”

“I bet,” Zhou Zishu went on, “it was the Scorpions who did Mirror Lake, too. If they believed Yusen had gotten his hands on the Zhen Yan files.” 

At that, Wen Kexing’s eyes flashed with a cruel edge as he laughed and rolled his eyes. “That,” he said, “is the first intelligent thing I’ve heard anyone say about Mirror Lake since this all started.”

Chengling looked between them, visibly confused. “Who are the Scorpions?” he asked. “When it happened, all the news sites said it was the Ghosts.”

“And that’s a great example of why you should assume the news is bullshit. How could the Ghosts plan an attack on Mirror Lake? That doesn’t make any damn sense,” Zhou Zishu said. “They’re not using the right M.O., for one thing. Not to mention there’s probably not more than a dozen Ghosts who are cognitively capable enough to do this. And even if they wanted to, The Ten Devils don’t work well enough together to pull off this sort of complex initiative. It’s way more likely it was someone who wanted everyone to think the Ghosts were responsible for what happened.“

At that, Wen Kexing nodded, and his expression went still and thoughtful. “I agree,” he said slowly, “but who would do such a thing? Who stood to benefit the most?”

Zhou Zishu chuckled. “That, Lao Wen, is the trillion dollar question. “Let’s find out.”

It took almost no time for Zhou Zishu to hack the police reports from Mirror Lake and Sanbai crime scenes, to learn what was being said over official channels. In addition to the Zhangs, someone named Lu Taichong had also been killed by an attack with the same M.O. Out of his entire family and staff, only two people had survived.

Chengling made an aborted choking sound when Zhou Zishu relayed that bit of information. This, too, had been a close friend of his father's, once upon a time.

“Who’s left?” Zhou Zishu demanded, refusing to let the kid start wallowing again in grief and panic.

Chengling just shook his head, apparently struggling to speak. The poor kid just wasn’t cut out for a life of violence. 

“Gao Chong, Shen Shen, Zhao Jing,” Wen Kexing intoned flatly. Apparently he, too, had been doing research on the matter. “It’s quite a shell game we’ve got here to solve. Three identical choices: same motives, same gains, same opportunities. So, which one’s the rat?”

“The rat is whichever of them controls the Scorpions well enough to make them act like Ghosts,” Zhou Zishu reasoned.  

Wen Kexing gave him a look that showed he felt that particular fact was obvious. God, he was insufferable. Zhou Zishu wanted to fight him. Or bite him. Or–- 

He shook himself. Enough of that. Wen Kexing raised an eyebrow, too knowing. 

God damn him if he tries that tingling bullshit…. 

“Don’t. You Dare.” 

“Don’t I dare, what, exactly?” Wen Kexing purred with a smug smirk. Zhou Zishu only glared in response, and kept talking. 

“The press is coming for Gao Chong, absolutely destroying his image over this –- his platform for decades has been security patches to stop the Ghost viruses. Someone is working very hard to make sure the press believes that he’s responsible for what’s happened.  In my experience, that means it’s almost certainly not him. He’s nothing but a scapegoat. A red herring.” 

“My girl agrees with you,” Wen Kexing agreed, nodding, “she’s been investigating Gao Chong’s setup in Yueyang since she left us. She’s managed to infiltrate the firewall, and make nice with the daughter, Gao Xiaolian, and a handful of the other young people there.” 

Zhou Zishu nodded, pleased. It would be good to have someone they could trust on the inside like that. 

“Did anyone else know about the data from the Zhen Yan project?”

“No one,” Chengling swore, “not even our moms. Only the five brothers knew, and in a couple of cases their successors. I think my oldest brother had a little more info than I did, but I didn’t know a thing until the attack was launched and my brothers were already dead. Dad knew they would come for him next, and he said…”  

“In that case, the answer is obvious. Either Zhao Jing or Shen Shen is leading the Scorpions behind the scenes. Whoever is, also killed Zhen Yan.”

“My dad was killed by one of his brothers?” Chengling’s face went abruptly from flushed to paper-white. 

“Yes,” Zhou Zishu confirmed simply. There would be no way to soften a blow like that, so he wasn’t even going to try. “But what I don’t understand is why. Why would they think your father had any more information than they did? What were they looking for?”

“The keys,” Chengling muttered, clutching at his chest and belly like he was about to be sick. “My dad said the files were on a locked drive which requires five separate MFA key codes for authorization…”  

Wen Kexing opened his mouth to speak, but before he could his avatar had another glitching episode. This one was much, much worse than the last. 

Zhou Zishu and Chengling both turned to watch in alarm as Wen Kexing’s face flickered in and out like the light from a faulty bulb. Then, he managed to stay present in front of them but his avatar went completely staticy, a random pattern of pixels and white noise like snow on an ancient television set that has lost its transmission signal.

Zhou Zishu had a stray, half-insane impulse to walk over and slap Wen Kexing on the side of his head like an old T.V. to see if it might help set him right. Before he could make a choice, however, the horrible thermal noise gave way to something that sounded like an old-fashioned dial-up internet connection engaging. Chengling’s hands flew up to his ears to block the screeching, grating noises. Zhou Zishu felt his heart start beating harder when he realized he had no idea what to do, and a sliver of panic threatened to infiltrate his legendary calm and detachment. Wen Kexing couldn’t just… flash out of existence, could he? 

You wouldn’t dare. Not now, asshole. Not before we’ve solved the mystery, not when I fucking need your help. Not before we— 

And then, in the blink of an eye, he was back. 

“Lao Wen! What the hell was that?”

Wen Kexing seemed disoriented, blinking as though to clear his vision. He looked up at Zhou Zishu, looking a little lost. “A-Xu? I can’t remember…”

Then he swayed on his feet, and Zhou Zishu stepped forward to catch him. 

Zhou Zishu turned to Chengling and demanded, “Tell me everything you know about this access key.” 

Chengling shrugged, eyes downcast, and replied, “I already have. I don’t have the key, my Dad d-died before he could tell me anything more. I’m sorry.” 

Fine, Zhou Zishu told himself, searching Wen Kexing’s expression for any signs of additional glitching and looking at Chengling’s lost puppy face, we can put a pin in this question. If that problem is out of reach it’s not like we don’t have enough to deal with right here. I’ve got a useless child and a sick idiot to deal with.

Wasn’t retirement supposed to be relaxing? 

“Chengling, get our stuff,” he barked aloud, feeling exasperated at how helpless the boy seemed without step by step guidance, “We need to get somewhere safe so that I can run some diagnostics on Lao Wen. We’re going home to regroup.” 

“A-Xu doesn’t need to run any diagnostics on me,” Wen Kexing demurred, unctuous and evasive as usual, “but he is always welcome to take me home.”

Zhou Zishu rounded on him, getting properly angry for a moment.

“The hell I don’t!" he snarled. "Can you tell me what the fuck just happened?"

Wen Kexing’s face fell, uncertain and chastised, uncharacteristically quiet, which was answer enough for Zhou Zishu. Zhou Zishu felt his annoyance growing and shut his mouth before he could say something he might actually regret. It’s not like he had a leg to stand on, after all, lecturing someone about taking care of himself.

"Yeah," he finally ground out, jaw tight with irritation and concern he didn't sign up for, "I didn’t fucking think so.”

He needed a minute. Turning on his heel he walked off in the general direction of his home, leaving Chengling and Wen Kexing to follow or not as they pleased. He walked fairly slowly, though. For no particular reason.

*********

Wen Kexing was absolutely insufferable on the way back to Siji. He was clearly under the (false!) impression that being taken back there to help unravel the strange goings-on meant much, much more than it actually did, and his flirting with Zhou Zishu grew to absolutely unbearable levels as a result. Even clueless Chengling seemed to notice, which was telling. It was also mortifying.

Out of sorts, Zhou Zishu retaliated by switching his appearance back to the scruffy, sallow, unappealing avatar design he’d been wearing when they first met. This was, naturally, a completely ineffective defense, but it made him feel good in an extremely petty way.

As they walked, Zhou Zishu pulled out a data pad to interface with the Jianghu network settings from the inside. Using an old burner login from his time working with Tian Chuang, he hacked a local police communication channel to see what wasn’t being said on the news, about the recent rash of crimes. 

“It was definitely the Scorpions who did Mirror Lake,” he murmured aloud as he read. 

“Not the Ghosts?” Wen Kexing asked, looking at him sideways. 

“No. Well, not only the Ghosts. It looks like they did actually manage to engage a few of the Ten Devils."  Zhou Zishu paused in his reading, mildly incredulous, and said, mostly to himself, "Fucking hell, the Ghosts are actually working with the Scorpions. What a fucking world. What on earth could the Scorpions have promised them to get their cooperation?” 

Wen Kexing spoke slowly and thoughtfully as he suggested, “I believe the intent was to frame the Master of Ghost Valley. The lesser Devils are always trying to get their hands on his files and protocols. They all want his power, and his aptitude for adaptation. I suspected their involvement from the start. That’s what Gu Xiang and I were trying to learn when we first crossed paths.”

“And you’re just saying so now? ” Zhou Zishu couldn’t hide his annoyance at this new revelation.

“I had to know if I could trust you,” Wen Kexing replied in a tone which indicated that he clearly thought this fact should be obvious.

Inexplicably, that hurt Zhou Zishu’s feelings. Of course Wen Kexing could trust him! But that was stupid. Why should Wen Kexing trust him at all? They were practically strangers to each other. Zhou Zishu’s hurt at Wen Kexing’s mistrust shifted into disgust at himself for being so soft. What the fuck was wrong with him these days? It was fucking embarrassing. 

While Zhou Zishu chastised himself inside his own head, Wen Kexing stared at him steadily. 

“I know now,” he said softly, when he managed to catch Zhou Zishu’s eye. His face was both too knowing, and too earnest. Zhou Zishu wanted to punch it. Or something.

“I didn’t say anything,” he spat out instead, even more prickly than he intended. 

“You didn’t have to,” Wen Kexing replied, just as soft as before. 

Zhou Zishu opened, then closed his mouth. What, exactly, was he supposed to fucking say to that?

“You feel it too, right?” Wen Kexing asked in a small voice. “This is all different with you. It’s never… I’ve never…”

Zhou Zishu’s hand twitched. He wanted to punch Wen Kexing in the stomach… or kiss his stupid fucking mouth. One of those, though he couldn’t decide which was more appealing. In the end he did neither, just walked away with a dismissive gesture, shaking his head. 

“Stop,” he snapped, when Wen Kexing tried to reach for him, “just shut up. I can’t do this.”  

Looking lost, Wen Kexing let his hand fall and allowed Zhou Zishu to retreat. That only pissed Zhou Zishu off more. 

What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re dying, asshole. You’re sitting here playing Sherlock Holmes and flirting with strangers like you have your whole life in front of you. You don’t. You promised old man Li you’d get this kid somewhere safe. That’s got to be your focus now – one good deed before it’s all over. Why the fuck are you going to spend your last months alive getting your heartbroken by some loud mouthed weirdo with too-big eyes?

The rest of the walk back to Siji was much too quiet without Wen Kexing’s constant chatter. 

********

“Get some sleep but stay jacked in,” Zhou Zishu instructed Chengling when they finally arrived at Siji. “We need you ready to move, and we won’t have time to reset the cryo chambers if something happens.” 

Chengling nodded, then went off gratefully to rest, leaving Zhou Zishu alone with the elephant in the room. The beautiful, idiotic elephant in question was currently poking around Zhou Zishu’s personal office like a nosy housemaid.

“Okay, sit down,” Zhou Zishu instructed brusquely, gesturing to the chair near his desk.

Wen Kexing turned to him with a placating smile. “I’m fine, A-Xu. Please, don’t worry about it.” 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, “It’s not a question of worry,” (a bald-faced lie) “it’s a matter of professional assurance. You’re my only backup right now, we’re being tailed by Scorpions, and I want to get this kid somewhere safe before he gets himself killed. I promised Old Man Li I would, and I don’t need his bitchy fucking ghost coming to haunt me later. So I need to make sure you’re not going to glitch out and vanish on me next time things get hairy.” 

“You promised the old man no such thing. You said you’d take Chengling to Sanbai, and you did. Your debt to Mr Li has been fulfilled! Stop pretending you don’t care about the brat, A-Xu, self-deception is unbecoming on you.” 

“You, quit changing the subject!” Zhou Zishu snapped, embarrassed and annoyed. He took Wen Kexing by the arm and tried to move him bodily to the desk, but Wen Kexing merely turned and slipped away, sidestepping with the grace of a professional tango dancer. 

“A-Xu, I assure you,” Wen Kexing said in that same, infuriatingly calm voice, “I’ll be fine. Trust me!”

Zhou Zishu closed his eyes and his mouth before he could say something he’d regret. He took a deep, centering breath. 

“It seems to me,” he said once he’d taken a moment to collect himself, “that I’m not the one with trust issues, here. What the fuck is your problem, Lao Wen? Do you think I’m going to try to hurt you? Aren’t we past that yet? This is just a basic scan, nothing invasive. What, exactly, are you so scared of me seeing?” 

Wen Kexing had the grace to look chastised, bowing his head and looking up at Zhou Zishu guiltily through his lashes. 

“A-Xu, I’ve upset you, I’m sorry.” 

He stepped towards Zhou Zishu, taking both of his hands in his, and leaned forward to brush a soft, chaste kiss against Zhou Zishu’s mouth. Even that one fleeting point of contact was enough to send sparks of shivering pleasure tingling down Zhou Zishu’s spine. In spite of himself, he couldn’t resist the temptation to lean forward, to deepen the kiss. 

It was just a kiss, and not even a particularly impassioned one, but even so Zhou Zishu thought he’d never enjoyed kissing another person so much in his life. Wen Kexing sighed in pleasure, as if he was thinking the same thing.

“Fuck,” Zhou Zishu breathed against Wen Kexing’s parted lips, “I want you so much, it doesn’t make fucking sense.”

“A-Xu…” Wen Kexing whined, moving to pull him closer.

“No,” Zhou Zishu said abruptly, stepping back and pushing the palm of one hand against Wen Kexing’s chest to keep him at bay, “I mean it. It really doesn’t make any fucking sense. What is this? Are you doing this to me?”

“What?” Wen Kexing’s eyes snapped open, apparently concerned and confused. 

“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Zhou Zishu pressed him, holding onto his suspicion like a life-preserver. It was the only emotion swirling around in his brain, after all, that felt even remotely familiar. “You’re just… you’re in my head again and you’re trying to confuse me. You’re trying to distract me when our lives are in danger, and I’ve had enough of your mind games. I can’t do this. I don’t have time for this.” 

Wen Kexing looked absolutely stricken at his words. Good. Distance was good. Zhou Zishu took another step back.

“A-Xu, I swear I–”

“Stop talking. I just…” Zhou Zishu trailed off, unsure of how he’d meant to finish that sentence. At a loss, he simply gave up, turning on his heel and walking out. 

“A-Xu!” Wen Kexing called after him. Zhou Zishu didn’t turn around. He needed a minute. He desperately wanted a drink. He had to clear his head, had to focus, and think, and worry about how they were going to get away from the people hunting them and ensure their survival – not about whatever secret agenda Wen Kexing was trying to catch him up in. 

As if out of habit, his steps led him to a room he hadn’t set foot in for half his life at this point: Jiuxiao’s old room. Fuck, as if this day wasn’t emotional enough. 

Zhou Zishu paused in trepidation, but he couldn’t bring himself to keep walking. With a slight tremor in his hand he reached up and pushed open the door, peering inside. The space hadn’t been touched since Jiuxiao had left home following Qin Huaizhang’s death. Zhou Zishu hadn’t been able to bring himself to archive the space after Jiuxiao, too, had passed. The walls were still adorned with action hero posters and merchandise from old video games he’d loved. In the manor of all Jianghu spaces, it was eerily untouched. Nothing fades or gathers dust, online. 

Swallowing hard, Zhou Zishu went in and shut the door behind him, sinking down to the floor and leaning against it, staring up at the ceiling, with a scream stuck in his gullet. He wanted to fight. He wanted to cry. What the fuck was wrong with him, lately? He felt absolutely insane. 

Zhou Zishu had always had a great deal of self-restraint in general. It was necessary in his line of work to keep up a perfectly calm demeanor. A spy master could not afford messy emotions. Even hiding his face behind an avatar, he couldn’t let his biometric readings fluctuate with his stress levels during his missions. Like a poker player, he’d ruthlessly excised every tell that he had, and he’d done a superb job of it. Clients and enemies and even his employers had only ever seen what he wanted them to see: an unassuming, nondescript lackey for the corporation’s CEO. No one ever knew who he really was, until they’d already been ruined.

Self-control had made Zhou Zishu one of the most powerful men in the world, though you’d never know it to look at him. He’d never been flashy or attention grabbing, but he was the silent left hand of the Jianghu’s elite royalty. His silent, deadly stealth was its own form of power, and a much more versatile one than many men strive to cultivate. It made him rich. It made him influential.

His iron-clad, dispassionate control had been one of the major points of contention when he and Jiuxiao had lost touch, all those years ago. Jiuxiao couldn’t deal with the mercenary Zhou Zishu had become after he’d inherited Siji, and didn't like the investors Zhou Zishu had fallen in bed with in order to protect their assets. Unwilling to set aside his pride and ambition, determined to keep the organization afloat, a young Zhou Zishu had been unwilling to hear Jiuxiao’s objections and pick a less aggressive path forward. The rift between them had grown into a canyon and Zhou Zishu lost his dearest friend and confidant. Zhou Zishu didn’t even know Jiuxiao had died, until they brought his body home. 

Even then, with his heart shattered to pieces, Zhou Zishu had maintained his calm. He’d kept his poise. He had endured. So how the fuck was he now reduced to this: a dying mess of a man, sulking in the dark and hiding from the only interesting person he'd met in the past ten years, just because he wanted to fucking kiss him too much? 

Pathetic. 

It wasn’t long, of course, before Wen Kexing came to find him. Zhou Zishu looked up at his lovely avatar and felt a pang of... something in his chest. Relief? Agitation? Whatever it was, it was sharp.

“A-Xu?” Wen Kexing began with an uncharacteristic tone of uncertainty, peeking around the corner of the door, “Are you… there you are. A-Xu, I’m coming in. Okay? Look, I know what you think but there, just then, I didn’t… I didn’t do anything . You know that, right?”  

Of course Zhou Zishu knew that. If he was being honest with himself, he’d admit he'd known that from the start. He just hated it because that meant that everything he was feeling... all the confusion and the heady desire and the fucking yearning and hope, was all in his own mind, was all his own fault.

“A-Xu, Please, believe me, I–”

“It’s fine,” Zhou Zishu cut him off with a dismissive hand gesture, “It’s… whatever. Just leave it. Leave me alone.”

Wen Kexing cocked his head, staring down at Zhou Zishu as though he were a particularly fascinating math equation to be solved. He was silent for a long minute, before visibly coming to a decision and softly saying, “No.”

“Why the fuck not?” Zhou Zishu snapped churlishly. He didn’t like being studied at the best of times, let alone like this.

Wen Kexing stepped closer, his strange, reptilian gaze grew steadier when Zhou Zishu let him. 

“Because I don’t want to leave,” he said simply, “and… You don’t want me to, either.” 

Zhou Zishu had no reply to that, so he sat in silence, fighting the urge to hunch his shoulders under the weight of Wen Kexing’s strange, uncanny-valley stare. Silence seemed to be enough of an answer for Wen Kexing, who came to sit on the floor next to Zhou Zishu. For a moment they sat quietly, staring off into the middle distance together. 

“What did you mean, you can’t do this?” Wen Kexing asked after a while. 

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, you know what I mean. What you said earlier.” 

“You know exactly what I meant. You shouldn’t play dumb either.” Feeling abruptly exhausted, Zhou Zishu stood up and moved towards the door. “Good night, Lao Wen.” 

“A-Xu, no!” Wen Kexing exclaimed.  

Zhou Zishu ignored him, reaching for the door. But then Wen Kexing vanished into thin air, reappearing in the span of a blink right in front of Zhou Zishu, blocking his path. 

"I wasn't done talking," he said with narrowed eyes.

"But I was," Zhou Zishu parried, "so get out of my way."

Predictably, Wen Kexing did not budge a centimeter. “Why?” he asked, peevish now. “You still don’t want me to go.” 

His arrogance was positively astounding. The way he said that like he was so fucking sure it was true… And the worst part was, he was right. Zhou Zishu didn’t want him to go at all. He was pathetically grateful to have been stopped, actually. 

It made him feel seen, and he absolutely hated it. How was it that Wen Kexing could see through him so easily after a few days, when people he’d known his whole life had never managed? Sure, the man was cagey and odd and clearly much smarter than he wanted people to know, but Zhou Zishu has dealt with people far worse than him, in his life. He’s made a highly successful career out of playing the most dangerous people alive like puppets, swindling criminals far older, more experienced, and more well connected than most people could even imagine. 

Zhou Zishu should find a cowboy like Wen Kexing easy to manipulate, easy to influence. But he couldn’t seem to keep Wen Kexing in his sights long enough to figure him out, and, worse, he couldn’t manage to keep a handle on his own emotions because of it. Wen Kexing’s voice grated on his nerves and made him snappish, but Wen Kexing’s absence made him feel sullen and malcontent. 

It’s like they always say, ‘Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.’ 

And it was with that thought, of all the horrifying clichés in the world, that it all clicked into place for Zhou Zishu. He was falling in love with Wen Kexing… head over heels, absolutely madly in love. Fucking hell. He’d really, truly gone insane, hadn’t he? He, a dying man and Wen Kexing, a near-stranger. What the fuck? This was terrible. 

“A-Xu, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

Yeah, well, maybe Wen Kexing would look weird too if he just realized he was falling for an absolutely insane person he had only known for a few short weeks, right after he quit his job so he could find a quiet place to die from his self-inflicted terminal illness in peace. Zhou Zishu had a plan, dammit. He didn’t fucking ask for this.

“What the fuck are you doing here anyway?” he demanded in lieu of explaining himself. He found he was itching for a fight. “Why the hell did you follow me here, if you don’t even trust me enough to run a diagnostic check and see what’s been going on with your avatar?” 

Wen Kexing gave him an infuriating smirk, then raked his eyes over Zhou Zishu’s form –- scruffy, unwashed avatar be damned, apparently. 

“You might say,” he murmured in an incongruously flirtatious tone for the conversation, batting his eyes, “that I’m here to… enjoy the scenery.” 

Zhou Zishu made an exasperated noise in his throat, and shoved Wen Kexing with both hands, sending him stumbling back a step to catch his balance. 

“Will you be fucking serious, for once in your fucking life? You asked me what I meant earlier. This. This is what I can’t do. I can’t just sit here and let you toy with me like a cat with a half dead lizard.”

“Is that what you think is going on?” 

“I don’t have any idea what’s going on! How could I? You won’t tell me anything about yourself. You won’t tell me why you’ve been hanging around, what it is that you’re after. Are you serious about anything you’ve said this whole time, or is this all a fucking joke meant to drive me out of my mind? What is it, exactly, that you want from me?”

For a minute there was nothing but silence, and the words that had torn themselves out of Zhou Zishu’s chest hung ringing in the air. 

Wen Kexing had on his strange, hawkish face again, the one that meant he was trying to figure Zhou Zishu out. Zhou Zishu didn’t think it was possible to hate a facial expression as much as he hated that one, until Wen Kexing’s face went soft and compassionate at him, which was somehow nine times worse. 

“I’ve really upset you,” Wen Kexing murmured. “You think I’m toying with you, and that upsets you?” 

Zhou Zishu glared at him in silence.

“That upsets you because…” 

Zhou Zishu thought for a long, intolerable second that Wen Kexing was really going to make him explain that, when his lovely expression cracked abruptly into something bordering on shock. 

“It upsets you,” he said with growing comprehension, “because you don’t want it to be a game. Because… because you like me? You… care about me.” 

Zhou Zishu scowled, but his anger had already lost its venom. “Stop playing dumb. I know you’re just doing it to annoy me, you attention whore.” 

“I am a terrible attention whore,” Wen Kexing agreed easily, taking a slow, cautious step closer, “but I’m not playing dumb. I’m terrible at human emotions; I told you that weeks ago.”

Only Zhou Zishu’s tattered pride kept him from backing away, from fleeing the room. Wen Kexing’s beautiful face was too close, his strange eyes watching too closely. His faint, mischievous smile was utterly infuriating. 

“You’re terrible in lots of ways,” he corrected, jutting his chin out haughtily, "those are two of them. Honestly I’d just say ‘terrible,’ full stop, and not bother itemizing.”

“I’m not terrible at everything though,” Wen Kexing protested. The comment was soft, playful, and cautious.

“Like what?” Zhou Zishu demanded, just to be contrary. 

“I’m pretty good at hacking your personal firewalls,” Wen Kexing said with an amused, lascivious smirk. 

“You ruined my personal firewalls,” Zhou Zishu replied. 

“Mmmmm. And you enjoyed every minute of it.” 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes. He wasn’t about to offer up his soft underbelly again. Not until– 

“I’m not toying with you,” Wen Kexing said softly, barely a whisper. He took another step closer into Zhou Zishu’s space. "I promise."

“You’re not,” Zhou Zishu echoed softly. It wasn’t really a question, anymore.

“You fascinate me more than anyone I’ve ever seen. I’m not toying with you, I just want to learn everything there is to know about you. All I want from you, A-Xu, is you.”

Zhou Zishu swallowed  hard and tried not to die from embarrassment as his face flushed with desire. 

“Idiot. I’m a run down, sickly old criminal. Why the fuck do you want something like that?” He managed to keep his voice steady as he spoke, and he was proud of that. 

Wen Kexing smiled and reached forward to run a hand through Zhou Zishu’s messy, unwashed hair. 

“Let me show you?”

Nothing about this was a good idea. Nothing. He should go. He should walk away. He should put a stop to this before he got any deeper. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” 

He smiled, then, and Wen Kexing’s answering grin was absolutely ravenous.

Chapter Text

Zhou Zishu was falling. 

No… wait… that wasn’t right. It felt more like he was being lifted, carried on the air by the sonorous, throaty shimmer of Wen Kexing’s ecstatic moaning. 

Or…. no, that wasn’t right either. Was it? No, of course not. It couldn’t be. It's just that everything was so muddled. It was hard to remember...

Zhou Zishu was sure it wasn’t right, if he focused. It’s just that the thoughts were slippery. He knew it was impossible, what he was feeling, the intensity of it… the… everything about all of it, but he couldn’t think long or hard enough to understand why when he was being battered from all sides with sensation, twisted up in a kaleidoscope of synesthetic hallucinations, smothered in fracturing fractals of color and shuddering with pleasure from the orgasmic sound of his own breath.

Still, it seemed that knowing it was impossible didn’t stop it from happening — didn’t stop the aching need that had him clawing at the sheets underneath him, then arching up so hard that nothing in between his shoulders and heels touched the bed. Knowing it was impossible didn’t stop the pulsing, throbbing ropes of white from streaking his belly as his over-sensitive cock jerked and spasmed against his own belly, ignored and untouched.

Wait. No, that wasn’t how it started, either. But then how… 

Later, when Zhou Zishu tried to piece together the memories of that night, he’d find them slipping through his hands like water. Being fucked by Wen Kexing was quite literally indescribable. 

It felt, he decided somewhere in the back of his mind… it felt a little like he’d been roofied. Almost, anyway. There was a stumbling sort of haziness and a spinning, kaleidoscopic euphoria instead of nausea and discomfort. It was completely overwhelming. 

Wen Kexing was relentless, of course. He was doing that thing again — the thing with sound. Every moan that escaped Zhou Zishu’s throat sent a feverish, pulsing pleasure through his pelvis, shuddering against his prostate and behind his cock. Gasping, snarling like a man possessed, Zhou Zishu bit down on Wen Kexing’s shoulder hard enough to fill his mouth with blood… or was it wine? It tasted like wine. But that couldn’t be true. Blood tasting like wine didn’t make sense… Did it? 

No, wait. That wasn’t how it started. That was later. 

Before all that, they had been downstairs. Wen Kexing had smiled, and there was a flicker, a momentary blurring of the visual landscape, and then suddenly they were standing in Zhou Zishu’s bedroom. 

“You shouldn’t be able to do that here,” Zhou Zishu observed. No one should be able to bend reality like that within the limits of Siji’s domain. That fact should have bothered him substantially more than it did.

Wen Kexing didn’t reply, just smirked and stepped closer, taking him by the hands. Zhou Zishu swallowed hard, feeling like his veins had been shot through with painkillers. Tingling euphoria buzzed through him like honey, slow and thick. His chronic pain was gone. His mind was gone. He barely even noticed as Wen Kexing snapped his fingers and — somehow, in a fraction of a second — vanished Zhou Zishu’s jacket and shirt.

Neat trick, that.

Zhou Zishu could barely feel his own arms and legs as Wen Kexing guided him to lay down on the bed and crawled to join him after vanishing his own shirt in a similarly impossible feat. 

Fuck. Fuck, how is he so beautiful? God… it’s just—

Zhou Zishu never finished that thought. It was stolen by another gasp, when their bare chests came together for the first time. Whose gasp? It didn’t matter. 

They stretched out there together in a feverish blur, twisting ropes of taffy being pulled and looped and pulled again until it was unclear where one of them ended and the other began. Zhou Zishu wanted to consume Wen Kexing, or be consumed. He felt heavy and slow, shivering with desire. He was freezing and Wen Kexing was a furnace, burning hot and so, so close. 

Zhou Zishu's hand floated up between them like it belonged to someone else, brushing fingertips along that sharp, prominent cheekbone. How could he not reach out to touch? The feeling of Wen Kexing’s flushed skin beneath his fingers sent purple and orange lights exploding behind Zhou Zishu's eyelids. The lights didn't stop bursting when he opened his eyes, and the colorful bursts made his scalp tingle, made his toes curl.

Wen Kexing shivered. Zhou Zishu realized his face was doing something he hadn’t given it permission to do. He thought he might be smiling. Maybe? His cheeks hurt and his eyelashes felt wet. Or were they? Suddenly he couldn't remember what wet things felt like.

Fucking hell. He was as high as a kite.

So was that how it started? No… wait. 

Before they had even made it to the bed… or was it after? They were standing up, weren’t they? It was so hard to remember… Yes, they’d been standing up, and Wen Kexing had both of his arms wrapped around Zhou Zishu, was leaving a trail of purple bruises with the sharp, insistent timbre of a coronet or a piccolo along the length of his throat and chest. 

Zhou Zishu’s whole body was shaking, and he had both hands buried in Wen Kexing's silky, dark hair. Every tug of his fingers in the inky, slippery mess of it made Wen Kexing moan, and every moan was a hot, needy crescendo pressing into the empty spaces in Zhou Zishu's body, filling him up from the inside. The second moan pressed itself into the first, expanding and dilating inside him, until it was joined by the third. The moans gathered within him, sweet vibrations swelling and growing deep inside, pressing hard against his prostate, a relentless, urgent pressure. He felt so tight and full that he was sure -– certain –- that if he looked down he'd find his belly distended from the sounds.

Zhou Zishu’s body wasn’t built for this kind of pleasure. It just didn’t make sense, feeling this way. Breathless and whimpering he shook with both hands in Wen Kexing’s hair, so aroused that his teeth ached from it. Was it possible to die from wanting someone? 

The swelling pressure against his prostate was driving him insane. He fell forward, losing his balance in an effort to get one of Wen Kexing’s thighs between his own, to trap it there, to press the aching, hot, rigid column of his cock against it and rut like an animal in a desperate, clumsy search for release.   

Wen Kexing caught him as he stumbled, but then pulled back, smiling indulgently.

“Lao Wen…” Zhou Zishu croaked when he found his voice, “what the hell are you—”

The smile that spread across Wen Kexing’s face was pure sin. Zhou Zishu turned his face away in annoyed frustration. The pillow was cold under his flushed cheek. They were definitely on the bed now. Maybe.

“Stop teasing me, you fucking bastard,” Zhou Zishu growled. Hadn’t they waited long enough? Shaking with need, he reached to wrap a hand around his own cock, only for Wen Kexing to catch his wrist, clucking his tongue.

“Do you really want to come before you know how tight I am inside? Before you feel how wet I am for you?”

Inside? But I thought… What the hell does he—

Before Zhou Zishu’s confusion could solidify into words, there was another flicker and then, like mitosis, like a bubble in an ancient, kitschy lava lamp, Wen Kexing’s entire form stretched and pulled away from center, pulling, pulsing, until he finally just… split in half. 

Two Wen Kexings smiled at him, wicked and predatory, one tall and broad, the other slender and soft with high, tight breasts and a feminine curve to his (…her?) hip. They were both naked, a pale, lithe feast for the eyes, and then, suddenly, so was Zhou Zishu. 

The soft, new, feminine Wen Kexing stepped closer right in front of him, laying a soft, small hand on his chest. Her eyes were impossibly wide, lips parted with desire. The taller, familiar, masculine Wen Kexing crowded close behind Zhou Zishu. Working in perfect harmony, they caged him in and caught him between them. He felt like a fly in a spider web.

The Wen Kexing in front of him turned her face up towards his as she moved closer, nipping at his lips before claiming them in a deep, searching kiss. The Wen Kexing behind him bowed his head to nibble on Zhou Zishu’s neck and shoulder, pressed close enough that Zhou Zishu could feel the insistent press of his erection against the small of his back. By the time they paused for breath, Zhou Zishu was so dizzy he wasn’t sure he could stand under his own power.

“How do you want me, A-Xu?” the pair chorused together against his skin, a soft alto melting into a rich baritone in perfect harmony.

How the fuck was he supposed to reply to that? 

Luckily for Zhou Zishu, the question appeared to be rhetorical. Within the next breath the Wen Kexing in front of him gave her counterpart an impish smile over his shoulder, and a silent nod. And then the world shifted and they were in bed, with Zhou Zishu seated on his knees in between those soft, girlish thighs. The Wen Kexing below him was spread out like a feast, running two fingers through the neatly trimmed thatch of hair at the apex of her thighs, down into the slick, wet — fuck, it was so wet it was glistening — folds of her cunt. 

Though he'd always been partial to hard cocks, Zhou Zishu found his mouth watering at the sight of her. She looked so warm… His own aching erection was in clear agreement, drooling just as eagerly as his mouth and leaving rivulets of precome along the tops of his naked thighs.

“A-Xu,” she whined, “how long are you going to make me wait?”

“What are you waiting for?” this new Wen Kexing whined, pouting prettily, “I want you. Need you in me.” 

How could he possibly refuse? Moving as though he was in a dream, Zhou Zishu shifted forward, fumbling to line up his cockhead with the slick, slippery passage of her pussy. He pushed inside, bending her leg and pressing it back towards her chest as he did. They both moaned. 

Zhou Zishu couldn’t remember the last time he was inside a cunt, but Wen Kexing’s felt absolutely incredible, mind-numbingly hot and wet and tight. She looked just as crazed as Zhou Zishu felt, panting like a whore, eyes unfocused as she rocked her hips beneath him, clawing at his waist, urging him to pick up his pace. She arched up in pleasure when he complied, thrusting deeper and moving faster, then pulled him into a greedy kiss that made his whole body light up. (He can’t remember clearly, but he might actually have been glowing.) 

“A-Xu….” she drawled, sex drunk and wanton.

“It’s okay?” he asked. It’s been a very, very long time since he’d done this. And he wanted— needed—

“Fuck, A-Xu. God, it's so good. You feel so good, I swear... You have no idea what you do to me. To us.” 

As she spoke she looked over Zhou Zishu’s shoulder at her counterpart, who trailed a big, cool hand down the center of his back and dipped it between his cheeks, teasing at the furl of his asshole with a single fingertip. Zhou Zishu gasped and convulsed, grabbing at the Wen Kexing below him hard enough to bruise.

“Oh,” she smirked knowingly, “he liked that. Do it again. Open him up for us. I want to know what he feels like from the inside.” 

What does that even mean?

Zhou Zishu whimpered as Wen Kexing’s cunt clenched around him, and the world shifted again, flickering like candlelight. 

Then they were on the edge of the bed. The tall, familiar, male Wen Kexing was close behind him. The smaller, female-bodied Wen Kexing spread her thighs wider, pulled her legs a bit higher, making space for her counterpart to spread Zhou Zishu’s thighs, too. Making space. 

“Beautiful,” Wen Kexing murmured as he spread Zhou Zishu’s cheeks with both hands, bending close enough that Zhou Zishu could feel his breath against his hole. His face flushed desperately in something like shame, but squirmier. His cock throbbed within Wen Kexing’s hot pussy. 

Zhou Zishu was certain he'd die as Wen Kexing once again ran the pad of a finger down between his cheeks and pressed softly against his hole.

Absolutely mortified to be praised for having a pretty hole, of all things, he tried to arch away, clenching down against the feeling. 

“Shhhh,” Wen Kexing admonished softly with a hint of a whine, “No, A-Xu, let me in.”

Then, somehow, Wen Kexing's fingers were slick, even though they'd been dry a moment before. Zhou Zishu felt the warm slide of lube as two of them breach him, pressing inside, slow, gentle, and unyielding. He cried out, convulsing at the intrusion. The motion only drove him deeper into Wen Kexing's cunt below him.

She hummed in pleasure, then dragged him down into another bruising kiss, swallowing his moans. She felt impossibly tight now, suddenly... like a vice. She tightened her thighs around his ribs and it was like her cunt was strong enough to crush his cock. Like she was trying to ruin him for fucking anyone else, ever again. He wished she would.

Behind him, Wen Kexing purred in pleasure and slid a third finger inside with almost no resistance. Zhou Zishu was too overwhelmed to feel embarrassed by the implication of that observation — the idea that Zhou Zishu liked to keep himself open and ready for intrusions like this one. That he'd written it into his own code to be so easy.

He was so overwhelmed he could barely think. He was just lying there, trapped between them, letting Wen Kexing control his thrusting with the rocking of her hips while Wen Kexing’s big, strong hand pressed deeper inside, twisting those three fingers, curling them, scissoring them to stretch him wider and wider… 

It seemed like an eternity had passed before Zhou Zishu felt those fingers retreat, but as soon as they withdrew he gasped from the hollow emptiness they left behind. When felt the blunt head of Wen Kexing’s cock pressed up against the rim of his hole he gasped with relief.

Zhou Zishu hadn't been fucked too often, honestly. He'd done it often enough to know he liked it — a lot — which is why he hadn't done more of it. He enjoyed it far too much. It was too good, too intense, and always left him feeling vulnerable in a way that he simply couldn't tolerate with most people.

His limited prior experiences certainly never prepared him for anything close to this — Wen Kexing beneath him, moaning and writhing and clenching the muscles of her cunt as she squirmed, and Wen Kexing behind him, pressing his cock past the ring of muscle he'd worked so carefully to stretch, sighing filthy endearments against Zhou Zishu's neck as he pushed in deeper, deeper...

When their hips came together stars exploded behind Zhou Zishu's eyes. He was trapped between them now, buried as far as he could reach inside Wen Kexing's cunt while Wen Kexing's cock impaled him from behind, so close Zhou Zishu could feel his balls against the backs of his thighs.

Behind him, Wen Kexing started thrusting. It was slow and gentle at first, but gradually picked up the speed and force of his thrusts when it became clear that Zhou Zishu could take more — was desperate for it, actually. Somewhere in the middle of it all Zhou Zishu lost his sense of time entirely. There was no future or past. There was only the warm, pulsing now where his cock was sheathed inside the man of his dreams, who was also fucking him hard enough to make him see stars.

“God, he’s perfect. It’s like he’s made for us,” the Wen Kexing behind him said dreamily, moments or hours later, pulling back and slamming his hips forward again, hard and sharp, “You should feel it.”

“I should, you’re right,” replied his counterpart. She was smiling like they were sharing some kind of private joke, flushed and glassy eyed with pleasure. 

Without another word she reached out to clasp her counterpart’s arm. In unison they both bowed their heads to bite his neck on opposite sides. Zhou Zishu screamed, but his voice had been reduced to nothing but a reedy moan. 

The world flickered and then Zhou Zishu was on his hands and knees in the center of the bed, not sure how he got there. 

Behind him, Wen Kexing pressed down on his lower back to make him arch and pounded into him, at exactly the right angle to graze past his sweet spot. 

The small, feminine Wen Kexing was kneeling up in front of him. Zhou Zishu’s cock, wet from being inside her, was now exposed to the air, and the sudden cold on his most sensitive places made him shiver. 

“You like cock,” observed Wen Kexing as she ran two fingers through her own wetness, reaching down with her other hand to cup Zhou Zishu’s chin and gaze into his unfocused eyes. “Do you want more?” 

Once again Zhou Zishu found himself completely at a loss for words. He blinked at her as he tried to find the words for the question he needed to ask.

Impatient, she grabbed him by the hair without waiting for an answer and pulled him closer, commanding, “Suck my cock, A-Xu. Show me how much you want it.” 

In a daze Zhou Zishu allowed himself to be pulled closer still, closing his lips obediently around the shiny red bud of Wen Kexing’s clit where it protruded shamelessly from its hood. He could taste the warm, earthy brine of her cunt mixed with the flavor of her own skin, and the salt of their sweat. 

Zhou Zishu had even less experience licking cunts than he did fucking them, but he set himself to the task as best he could. And Wen Kexing seemed to enjoy it well enough, moaning sweetly and twisting her small hands in his tangled hair as she ground down against his mouth. 

And then slowly, so slowly Zhou Zishu wasn’t sure it was really happening, the hot, hard flesh he held between his lips started to swell. With every suction of his lips it grew a little larger, and then a little more, filling out and lengthening until it pushed past his lips and filled his mouth — transforming slowly into a proper phallus. 

“Do you like my cock, A-Xu?” she purred, turning his face up to hers with a fist in his hair. 

He only moaned with his mouth full and closed his eyes, momentarily too turned on to think. 

He looked up again to see her… him… there, that small, petite frame with her sloping hips and tiny waist, with a steadily growing cock nestled in the hair at the apex of her soft, white thighs. He could still see the globes of her breasts above that proudly protruding erection, swaying with the motion of her thrusts. 

“You’re doing well,” she told him sweetly. “Keep going as long as you like. You can stop when it’s big enough.”

What does that even mean? he wondered, shaking with pleasure. He tried to ask, tried to make a questioning noise, but then all coherent thoughts were driven from his brain as the Wen Kexing behind him hooked a thumb inside Zhou Zishu’s hole beside his own cock and pulled, stretching him wider still. 

She tangled her hand even tighter in his hair, making his scalp erupt in tingles that sent an incandescent display of colors dancing behind his eyelids. He was shaking from it, melting, possibly discorporating. The human mind wasn't meant to endure pleasure like this, surely. How could he possibly keep up with his avatar?

And then she started to fuck his face in earnest, setting the same merciless pace as her counterpart behind him.

His eyes were watering liberally now — or maybe he was just crying— and he gagged as the cock in his mouth swelled big enough to stretch his jaw.

“He’s so greedy,” she purred dreamily, gazing down on him fondly.

“He is,” the other Wen Kexing agreed approvingly, two fingers now inside along with his dick. 

“Do you think he’s ready? Can he take us both?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” 

Both Wen Kexing’s were behind him now. Zhou Zishu collapsed forward onto his forearms, drooling onto the bed, his mouth cruelly left empty. 

Four hands grabbed at his hindquarters and hips, lifting him up higher and higher. And then the bed, too, was gone. Zhou Zishu was suspended in midair as they flipped him onto his back, without Wen Kexing’s big cock ever slipping free. 

Soft alto and baritone laughter danced around him in a playful counterpoint, as if a Bach invention had suddenly turned pornographic. Zhou Zishu was so overwhelmed it was becoming difficult to think, but he noticed that both Wen Kexing's now seemed to be the same height as they pulled his floating body towards them again. 

Silently smiling they each took one of his legs and bent it until his knees touched his ears. He felt warm hands continue to support the weight of them, but when he looked down the hands were nowhere near his legs. 

Fuck. How many damn hands do you have? 

“Enough,” they both smiled as they answered in unison. He hadn’t realized he’d been speaking out loud. 

And then the feminine Wen Kexing, whose brand new cock was swollen cherry red and glistening with precome and Zhou Zishu’s saliva, moved into place next to her counterpart and slowly but steadily pressed her way inside. 

It should have hurt more, probably. The settings on Zhou Zishu’s avatar were close enough to normal human capabilities, especially when it came to things like sex, that two big cocks with not enough prep should burn more. But all Zhou Zishu could feel was the satisfying stretch of a well used muscle and a heavy, addictive fullness inside. 

“Oh,” the feminine Wen Kexing breathed, “gosh, you’re right. Oh, he feels like heaven.” 

“He likes it,” the masculine Wen Kexing sighed happily, “what you’re doing. He likes how it feels with both of us. I think he likes being all filled up. It looks like he wants more.” 

Zhou Zishu was beyond attempting to imagine what “more” could possibly entail at this point. He was at a loss to do anything but lay there and take it, head craned up to watch as they fucked into him and out of him together in perfect concert. 

Time lost all meaning. He was utterly hypnotized, helpless and adrift in the kaleidoscopic assault on the senses that apparently comprised sex with Wen Kexing. But at a certain point Zhou Zishu looked up and saw that the Wen Kexing’s had begun to blur. The rest of the room stood out in sharp relief behind the soft, fuzzy outlines they had become. 

And then, just as quickly as she’d arrived, the second Wen Kexing was gone. 

Zhou Zishu didn’t feel any less full, though. He didn’t feel less stretched. When he looked down he could see his lower abdomen bulging with each thrust, as though his skin wasn’t big enough to contain it. It was pronounced enough that if they’d been in realspace, he’d be worried about permanent damage. 

“Oh, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing purred, “I love how you look when you’re watching me fuck you. I love watching you want it. You’ve been left empty for so long it’s a crime. I want to keep you full forever now.” 

I want that too, Zhou Zishu realized. The thought terrified him. He barely knew this man. He’d known him for mere weeks. Days, really. Wen Kexing was very clearly the most dangerous person he’d ever met. But he wanted it so bad he could die. 

He’d never been good with emotions. 

So he responded in the only way he knew how. He bared his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and glared at Wen Kexing, gasping and panting as he challenged him, “Is that all you’ve got?” 

Wen Kexing’s answering smile was utterly unhinged. 

His next thrust was savage enough that it knocked the wind out of Zhou Zishu’s lungs. It sent stars dancing around his field of vision. It made him convulse, either with pleasure or pain. He didn't care which.

“More,” Zhou Zishu growled, and when Wen Kexing reached for his throat he just let his head fall back. 

Then Wen Kexing’s feet were on the ground and Zhou Zishu’s back was braced against the wall of his bedroom. Wen Kexing stopped thrusting in favor of just holding Zhou Zishu there, impaled on his impossibly big erection, rocking his hips just enough that Zhou ZIshu’s sweet spot was screaming from it.

“Fuck, A-Xu,” he groaned, wild eyed and trembling, “it feels like nothing I take from you will ever be enough. I’ll never get far enough inside you to feel like you're satisfied. I’ll never be deep enough to make me happy.”

“More,” Zhou Zishu demanded again, feeling absolutely insane. He thought he was probably going to die from this, but what a way to go.

Wen Kexing leaned in and claimed his mouth with a biting, bruising kiss. They were both crying now and Wen Kexing’s legs were shaking.

“How much can you take?” he marveled, gazing adoringly into Zhou Zishu’s face, eyelashes clumped with tears.

“As much as you can give me,” Zhou Zishu gasped out, too honest in his extremity.

It felt like a confession. 

Wen Kexing’s eyes fluttered closed, like he was more overwhelmed than Zhou Zishu felt right now. 

His hand on Zhou Zishu’s throat felt too big. No… all of him did. Was Zhou Zishu shrinking, somehow?

No. It wasn’t that. It was that Wen Kexing was growing. All over, getting bigger and bigger like Alice and her bottle of “drink me.”

“You asked for it. Now, I’m going to fill you up now, A-Xu. I’m going to fill every empty space you have. You're going to take it for me, aren't you? You're going to take everything I can give?”

Zhou Zishu sobbed as Wen Kexing’s cock swelled larger still, pulsing against the sweet spot inside him, stretching his rim farther and farther. It was so much, so overwhelming that he barely noticed when the cresting wave of his orgasm started to pull him into its undertow. 

The room was gone. There was nothing but Wen Kexing and the empty network matrix, the illusory scaffold of grey green lines over inky black void. 

Wen Kexing was growing bigger, even then. Zhou Zishu was bursting at the seams. He was dying, certainly. For the first time in his life he felt truly alive.

Wen Kexing was still growing, expanding into the black nothingness of the network. And then Zhou Zishu was coming as hard as he ever had in his life, speared open, stretched to bursting, and in tears.

His orgasm crested and a scream tore its way out of his throat, guttural and savage. It barely sounded human. It wasn't until he looked down and saw his own, untouched cock erupting all over itself in jets of white, watching the inhumanly large Wen Kexing growing bigger and bigger until he was completely, utterly certain he’s going to be torn apart from it — was already torn apart from it — that his exhausted, overstimulated brain gave up. 

The last ripples of his orgasm hadn’t even finished caressing his fingers and toes before Zhou Zishu blacked out, lapsing into unconsciousness, or maybe death.

Chapter Text

At 4:00 in the morning Zhou Zishu woke up alone. That felt wrong, somehow... but it took him a few minutes to realize why he'd ever expect anything different.

Wen Kexing.

Just thinking the man's name sent a twinge of arousal-tinged longing curling in his stomach. Where had that lunatic gotten to, at this hour?

Has he gotten what he wants from me now? He doesn't need to stick around anymore?

Zhou Zishu ruthlessly tamped down that unwelcome worry before it had a chance to take root. The fact that such a banally vulnerable thought even had fertile ground in his psyche to do so was absolutely demeaning. Restless and annoyed with himself for feeling so needy, he climbed out of bed to go have a look around.

It was unsettling to feel so completely unchanged after the night he’d had. He felt like, mentally speaking, his entire perspective on life had been rearranged along with his guts, but in the mirror, his reflection looked utterly normal, without a hickey or abrasion in evidence. It seemed that whatever intimacy program Wen Kexing had designed to blow his mind last night hadn't included any after effects – he hadn’t even left Zhou Zishu’s ass feeling used. It was incongruous to feel nothing at all after the kind of the sex they’d had, enough so that Zhou Zishu felt a little bereft for its absence. It made him wonder how it would feel to get fucked by Wen Kexing in realspace, when the aches and  how it would feel to crush Wen Kexing to his real chest, and feel his heart beating. 

Fucking hell, he groaned internally, I am so fucking gone on this guy. I must be a bigger idiot than anyone ever suspected.

Zhou Zishu didn’t have time for this. What kind of fool went and fell for someone when he was so close to dying? He should have been trying to let go of his worldly attachments these days, not find new and fascinating ways to connect with the living. But even knowing all this, it was as though Wen Kexing had carved a big, empty space in Zhou Zishu’s body that only Wen Kexing could fill. Which, of course, was bullshit. 

The fragile, hopeful feeling in his chest wouldn’t be extinguished by logic, though. Even worse, he found he didn’t even particularly want to stamp it out. 

What if… Maybe… 

A motion sensor alarm from within Qin Haizhang’s study private is all it took to crush every potential what-if under the boot-heel of betrayal. 

Wen Kexing. Who else could it be?

The only thing you can trust other people to do is betray you, Zishu. How many fucking times wil this happen before you get that through your thick skull?

Zhou Zishu set his jaw and schooled his face into a neutral, impassive stare before he made his way to his mentor’s suite. Taking a deep breath, he keyed open the door. 

“A-Xu!” came Wen Kexing’s surprised, sheepish exclamation.

“What? Did you think you’d managed to fuck me senseless enough not to hear an alarm in my own home?”

“A-Xu, no it’s not what you–”

“It’s not personal. Yeah. Of course it isn’t. How could it be? You’re just a stranger, after all.” 

Zhou Zishu repressed a cringe. He didn’t even sound sincere in his own mind. 

“A-Xu, no,” Wen Kexing whispered, aghast. 

Hm, maybe he sounded sincere enough, after all.

“You have five minutes to convince me not to throw you out of here–”

“Please, A-Xu, it isn’t as though you could–” Wen Kexing tried to break in, a hint of his arrogant smirk breaking through the mask of contrition he was wearing

“-and terminate the connection between the Siji network and the rest of the Jianghu forever,” Zhou Zishu finished.

Wen Kexing’s mouth snapped shut. For a moment, they simply stared. The silence between them was deafening. 

After a long, heavy breath Wen Kexing cleared his throat. "A-Xu, how did you know?" he asked quietly, looking at Zhou Zishu like he was a bomb in need of dismantling.

"How did I know you can't access anything outside the Jianghu?" Zhou Zishu smiled just to show his teeth, "I didn't, until now. Thanks for confirming that theory, actually." 

Wen Kexing's face looked pained as he replied, "You wretched reprobate, you are insufferable. I cannot believe I like someone as awful as you." 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes, "Yeah, that makes two of us."

Wen Kexing exhaled heavily, then turned back to meet his eyes, imploring, “A-Xu, I swear, no matter what you think, I swear to you, I haven’t been toying with you, not like that.”

“Four minutes, thirty seconds,” Zhou Zishu replied coldly, not wanting to engage with any more pretty lies.

“A-Xu… Please, trust–”

“How dare you,” Zhou Zishu growled, losing his temper at last, “speak to me about trust when I’ve caught you red-handed in the middle of the most secure, heavily encrypted partition in my entire bank of hard drives.”

How dare you turn me inside out like you did, how dare you infect me like a virus and… fucking… corrupt all my cognitive functions thinking I could LET YOU IN, you bastard, if you weren’t even going to wait one whole fucking day before stabbing me in the back?

Wen Kexing looked utterly miserable. He didn’t open his mouth to speak, though. For once it seemed the ever-chattering sonofabitch had no words to share. 

“What, exactly,” Zhou Zishu asked, “are you after, here? What was so important that you had to go to all the trouble of seducing a dying man to access it?”

“A-Xu, what? Dying? What do you–”

“You know what, never mind. I honestly can’t think of a single thing you could say right now that would make me permit you to stay here. Get out.”

“A-Xu, please,” Wen Kexing was wild eyed, “don’t do this. I–”

“Get. Out.”

Wen Kexing looked at him long and hard, clearly in pain, clearly trying to come to some kind of decision.

Too little too late. 

Zhou Zishu opened the door, gestured silently for Wen Kexing to precede him out. For a long moment he wondered what the hell he’d do if Wen Kexing called his bluff and refused to leave. He wasn’t quite sure, yet, who (what) Wen Kexing actually was, but he knew enough to be certain he’d never be able to beat him with brute force. 

But, for better or worse, Wen Kexing seemed too off kilter to remember at this moment that he was frighteningly close to omnipotence here in the network. He only dragged his hands down his face and sighed.

“Zhen Yan,” he whispered, voice dry. Of all the words in all the languages in the world, Zhou Zishu never could have predicted those two.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

Wen Kexing picked up his head, meeting Zhou Zishu’s gaze with sad eyes, “I was looking for information about Zhen Yan.” 

A pang of alarm ricocheted through Zhou Zishu. He tensed up, suddenly on high alert with all thoughts of self pity utterly forgotten.

“How the fuck,” he enunciated slowly, “do you know that name? Who told you about him? How the hell did you know Zhen Yan was ever even here ? That was never public information.” 

“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing murmured, looking ill, “Don’t you know? Haven’t you guessed? 

Zhou Zishu could guess, but he didn’t want to, because the only guess he had felt absolutely insane. There was no way that Wen Kexing could be Zhen Yan, right? Zhou Zishu had met Zhen Yan in realspace, once, when he was just a kid – the Zhen Yan back then hadn’t acted like this, so brazen and entitled and… overwhelming. Hell, he’d been so shy they had to pry him out of his mother’s arms. And anyway, Long Que had definitively confirmed that Zhen Yan had died.

“I’m not playing your damn guessing games,” he scowled. “You are going to tell me exactly what’s going on. Now. Immediately. Tell me every single fucking thing. Don’t you dare leave anything out.”

It turned out that Wen Kexing sang like a bird when he was properly motivated. Slowly at first, but then faster and growing like a snowball rolling downhill, the story came out. 

Qin Huaizhang knew the Zhens, and he’d been following their work on AI. The Zhens really believed they were on the right track, but by their methods synthesizing sentience would have taken years. Like a kid, it needed time and processing power to develop reasoning and speech. They had come to Qin Huaizhang for advice, confiding that they had a prototype which really was the real thing, a bona fide artificial mind, not old fashioned “machine learning” or mimicry – but they were terrified of going public with their work because they were already being threatened by bad actors and morally corrupt competitors… and the mind they'd built was quite literally just a baby, helpless and impressionable. 

In the end, with nowhere else to turn and afraid for their lives, they went on the run and with Qin Huaizhang’s help they ‘vanished’ to Siji Holdings.

This much of the story Zhou Zishu knew. He’d been there, after all. 

The Zhen family gave their research files and metadata to Qin Huaizhang who locked it very deep in their archives. This is what Wen Kexing is looking for, and the secret Zhou Zishu had worked for most of his life to help conceal: the coveted Zhen Yan files, mythical in their fame, had been here the whole time, for almost twenty five years.

“So you’re looking to track down your parents’ body of work,” Zhou Zishu sighed, deflating a bit as his anger began to dissipate. 

“It’s not just that, it’s more like…” Wen Kexing’s face did something complicated as he searched for his words, “they built… they called it their baby. They made a child! And I’ve been alone for– If I have a baby brother out there, I want to know him. And – and I need to know, I need to learn how my family died.” 

Zhou Zishu's shoulders sagged under the weight of his exhaustion, “Yeah, of course you do. But like… you damn well could have asked me, you idiot! God, for twenty fucking years I’ve thought that kid I played with back then was dead. Do you really think I wouldn’t have helped? Why did you have to use me like this?”

“Use you? A-Xu, no. If I just wanted to use you there are so many easier ways. I could have– I could have incapacitated you in a hundred ways to get in here. Last night was– I’ve never… I’ve never felt that.” 

“Forgive me for being skeptical,” Zhou Zishu replied drily, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“God, I know how it must look. I am sorry for the timing. I really am. But A-Xu, please, I have to know. This is the best shot I have, and I don’t even know if what I need is going to be logged on the files…” 

Wen Kexing glanced over at the computer on the desk that housed Qin Huaizhang’s old network access UI. His fingers twitched unconsciously as he did, obviously struggling to restrain himself so close to his goal. 

“What do you need, that wouldn’t be here?” Zhou Zishu wondered aloud.

Wen Kexing laughed and shrugged helplessly, “I never learned how I died.” 

For a moment Zhou Zishu’s mind went blank. “How you… died. Okay, so, that means you– You’re–” He cut himself off as his brain caught up and he realized he’d been right about what was going on here. His insane gut feeling was, in fact, the truth.  

“Yes, that’s right,” Wen Kexing agreed as though he could read Zhou Zishu’s thoughts on his face, “He's me. Are you really just figuring that out? A-Xu, really, you’re smarter than this. But yes, that’s it. I don’t remember what happened, not a damn thing. I have to know. How can I not remember? It’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me, and when I try to think back on it there’s nothing there. My mind is blank. Not knowing is going to drive me mad. Hell, it probably already has.”

Zhou Zishu was raw with betrayal, pissed off, and yes, dammit, sad. But fuck, he got it. He'd be feeling the exact same way in Wen Kexing’s shoes. Against his will he felt his anger receding farther and farther, replaced by concern.

When did you turn into such a damn pushover? 

“A-Xu. Please?”

Zhou Zishu took a long moment to set aside his hurt feelings and his unfortunate emotional attachment to Wen Kexing, to ask himself what he would do next, if this was just one more job to do and he wasn’t taking things so personally. 

“Okay,” he replied at last, “Let’s find out.” 

Wen Kexing’s smile was dazzling, even filled with tears. 

Zhou Zishu shoved him unceremoniously out of Qin Haizhang’s chair and started typing. They made their way through several layers of security and eventually located a drive that looked promising, but it was encrypted. 

“I may know a place we can go for help with decrypting this,” Zhou Zishu considered, speaking more to himself than Wen Kexing, “and maybe track down more answers, too.”

“Who do you mean?” Wen Kexing wanted to know. 

Zhou Zishu was opening his mouth to reply when a klaxon started sounding signaling that one of Siji's perimeter alarms had been tripped. 

“It’s the fucking Scorpions again,” he growled. “How the fuck do they keep tracking us? God dammit, we need to get out of here. Fuck, I have to wake up Chengling. Our bodies aren’t safe here anymore, we need to unplug. Lao Wen, download this, and once you have the file, run!”

“A-Xu, where should I meet you?” 

“There’s a Virtual Services station about ten kilometers west of here,” Zhou Zishu began, wondering even as he spoke if Wen Kexing would bother meeting him at all, or just vanish forever out of his life.

“The one that looks like an antique internet cafe?” Wen Kexing interrupted, eyes bright with adrenaline, "I know it."

“That’s the one," Zhou Zishu nodded, "Now move!”

Wen Kexing moved. Zhou Zishu groaned and went to unplug. He was definitely getting too old for this shit.

*********

In addition to being a convenient place to rendezvous, moving west had the secondary advantages of bringing them farther away from the Scorpions’ known territory as well as bringing them closer to the realspace train station Zhou Zishu knew they would need before the day was out.

His body ached after so long in the network – dragging his consciousness back into his rotting meatsuit always hurt like a bitch. He was having trouble keeping up with Chengling as they walked. Even worse, he missed Wen Kexing. The whole situation left him in an absolutely foul mood.

“Ping’an’s Quicksilver Virtual Services,” Chengling intoned as he read the flashing neon sign. “What is this place?” 

Zhou Zishu shrugged. “It’s whatever you need. Waystation? Bank? Post office? They do a little of everything. But most importantly, I know the owner, and I know we can trust him to keep his damn mouth shut. First I need to plug in and connect with Wen Kexing again, and then I need to send a quick email before we get our train tickets sorted out.” 

“An email?” Chengling blurted out, eyes wide in disbelief. “Are you sure you don’t need a carrier pigeon? Who even has email anymore?”

Zhou Zishu narrowed his eyes and reached out to cuff Chengling on the side of his skull for his sarcasm.

“People who don’t trust the network, you smartass. Your dad would have loved these guys.” 

They opened the door to a charmingly vintage setup complete with wretched fluorescent lighting and dismally soft, instrumental covers of classic pop songs 

“Good afternoon, sir, how may I help– Wait. Zhou Zishu! Is that really you?” 

“Hello, old friend. I’m in a bit of a tight spot, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to impose.” 

“Come in! Come in!” Ping’an stood and came from behind the counter to usher them inside with excited surprise, fretting over Zhou Zishu's poor health like an old grandmother as he surreptitiously checked his avatar settings and MFA keys to confirm he was who he said he was. He needn’t have been so discreet; the common sense and attention to security was a welcome comfort. But Zhou Zishu knew old habits were always hard to break.

Once he was satisfied with the authentication results, Ping’an guided them back to his private office and put the kettle on. While the water heated he fussed over Chengling in a stern-but-fawning manner that made it clear he was used to caring for useless rich boys. (Another old habit that refused to die, no doubt.) The whole song and dance of it made Zhou Zishu weary to watch, but both of the others seemed to be enjoying themselves so he made a point to hold his tongue – especially because it meant he could leave Chengling there in realspace in Ping’an’s capable care and with a plate full of sticky buns. With a grateful nod he slipped out of the room and made his way to the back so he could plug himself back into the network.

When Zhou Zishu plugged himself back into the network Wen Kexing was waiting for him, expression tight and anxious. 

“I hacked into a Scorpion comm channel while I was waiting. I was only there for a few seconds before they kicked me but I did hear something that is, unfortunately relevant. It’s concerning the tech Zhao Jing gave you to help with your implants.”

Fucking hell. Of course. How could I have forgotten? It’s obvious.

“Tracking devices?” he groaned, dragging his palms down his face, weary. 

“Got it in one. A-Xu, I’m sorry, I can’t fix them without a lot more research that we don’t have time for, and I’m scared to fuck up your nervous system if I rush. You’ll have to remove them.”

God dammit. And they were making me feel better, too.

Zhou Zishu nodded, resigned, and nodded, “I’ll take out the mods and then we can get moving.”

Wen Kexing gave him a long, pointed before replying, “No. You’re going to uninstall the mods and then you are going to rest . You’re dead on your feet, and you’re no good to anyone if you collapse on us. Everything will keep until tomorrow.”  

“I’ve accomplished more on the verge of collapse than most men manage in a lifetime,” he groused aloud, just for the sake of being argumentative. He knew Wen Kexing was right, though. 

“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing admonished, with a tone that somehow felt both indulgent and threatening. 

“Fine,” Zhou Zishu grunted as he walked up to a tram and typed in a destination, “I’ll rest for the night, but no longer. Besides, I can sleep more on the train.” 

"Where are you taking us?" Wen Kexing asked. 

Zhou Zishu sighed heavily, trying for a smile that ended up feeling like a grimace, “We’re going to Beiyuan." 

“Where? Wait, I know that name.”

“Not 'where,'” Zhou Zishu corrected, “'who.' We’re going to see Qi Ye.” 

Wen Kexing’s eyes widened in genuine surprise, and he pointed out, “But Qi Ye is dead.”

Zhou Zishu took a moment to be proud of his own work. It’d been his cover-up job back then, after all. 

"No, you’re dead,” he corrected Wen Kexing with a sideways smirk, “Jing Beiyuan is just offline.” 

Wen Kexing gave him an exasperated look. “Jing Beiyuan… you mean… your old coworker? He’s Qi Ye? Him? ” 

“The very same.” 

“Incredible. I’ve always wanted to meet him; the man is a legend.” 

“Well then, this is your lucky day.”

“Where should we rendezvous tomorrow?” Wen Kexing asked.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Zhou Zishu began slowly, unsure of how to approach the next, delicate topic, “I’ll need to bring you.” 

“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing protested with an eye roll. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t go anywhere I can’t find you.”

“God, you’re so creepy," Zhou Zishu shook his head and chuckled. "You do see how that’s creepy, right? But also, no, you won’t be able to find me there. It doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s a completely closed network, not accessible via the Jianghu network at all. When I said I’d need to bring you, I meant I would need to bring you. In realspace. On… on a physical disk.”

At that, Wen Kexing balked. Zhou Zishu had expected nothing less. If Wen Kexing was on a disk in Zhou Zishu's pocket he'd be impotent, out of touch, and even more helpless than a newborn baby.

“We can stay in the network with you while our bodies are in transit. I have a trusted contact making the arrangements right now. But once we arrive, there’s no other choice. I’ll hold onto the drive myself. I swear to you, I’ll take care of it. Lao Wen, do you trust me?”

Wen Kexing looked… terrified. It was extremely weird. 

He did eventually agree to the terms (it wasn't as though there were other options, after all), but not before he threatened Zhou Zishu extensively and at length with the details of Gu Xiang’s certain revenge in the event that anything should befall him while he was offline. That he was so visibly nervous spoke volumes about how hard this kind of trust was for him. The level of detail he managed to invoke was truly, disturbingly impressive. 

“What is Gu Xiang anyway?” Zhou Zishu wanted to know, sidestepping Wen Kexing’s litany of gruesome imagined scenarios. “Is she another lost child, like you?” 

Wen Kexing quirked a brow, considering the question as though he’d never been asked before. Perhaps he hadn't been.

“No, she’s not human,” he started slowly, “I  suppose she’s an experiment more than anything else. The entity you’ve come to know as Gu Xiang was an abandoned piece of machine learning code that I discovered on an archived, forgotten server share a dozen years ago, or so. I’ve been iterating her coding over time – she’s cognizant now, like… well, like the Ghosts. I’ve been trying to train her to have a moral compass, but if we’re being honest I’m not sure I’m the best teacher for that.”  

If they were being honest , Zhou Zishu had to admit he was too impressed at Wen Kexing’s implied coding skills to be amused at the idea of him teaching morality. The number of people in the world who could write code convincing enough to seem truly alive could be counted on one hand. His brilliance was, in fact, a little terrifying. The world was lucky he was worried about morals at all. 

The way he talked about Gu Xiang was reassuring, actually. Too many dead people in the Jianghu lost their sense of right and wrong when they ended up incorporeal for the long term. Though, come to think of it, she was less like a dead person and more of a rogue program like the Ghosts, who purportedly had never had morality or ethics to begin with. It was good to see Wen Kexing with a touchstone like that, considering how long he’d been trapped here.

Gu Xiang, Zhang Chengling… the world is really, truly screwed if the two of us are left here parenting children.

As if sensing that Zhou Zishu’s mind had wandered, Wen Kexing glared at him and waved his hands dismissively. “Look, we can get into the details later if we must but the point is: you don’t need to know exactly what she is, you just need to know that if anything happens to me she will fucking end you.” 

Zhou Zishu smiled easily and nodded, “Good.” 

Wen Kexing looked confused, “You’re not mad at me?” 

Zhou Zishu snorted, “Mad? About the lying and hiding, you mean? I’m still fucking furious. But that has nothing to do with Gu Xiang. You’re raising her like a child, aren’t you? It’s good that she’d want to avenge you. That’s how things should be. It’s good. I’m glad you have that.”

I’m glad you haven’t been totally alone all this time.

“No, I get that part,” Wen Kexing clarified, looking harried, “I just don’t understand why you care .” 

Are you fucking serious right now? How can you not know? 

Zhou Zishu sighed again, “You have a lot to learn about people, Lao Wen. Think about it for a while. I’ll explain later if you don’t figure it out. But now I gotta go deal with these mods.” 

Wen Kexing gave a tiny, hopeful smile and echoed, “Later?”

 For the first time it occurred to Zhou Zishu that following their argument in Qin Huaizhang’s study Wen Kexing was worried that there wouldn’t ever be a “later.” 

What a fucking idiot. 

“Of course, later,” he grumbled aloud, rolling his eyes, annoyed at having to provide the reassurance even as he was reaching out to ruffle Wen Kexing’s perfectly coiffed hair.

Wen Kexing grinned and reached for him with both arms. Zhou Zishu allowed himself with only a modicum of resistance to be drawn into a long, lingering kiss, until he was shivering with desire.

He hoped that “later” would come soon. 

*********

Back in realspace Zhou Zishu enlisted Ping’an to help him rip out the mods. The process, awake and with no anesthesia, had very, very little to recommend it. 

After it was done Ping’an brought him a bottle of good, strong booze – no doubt from Beiyuan’s personal cellar – and left Zhou Zishu on a fold-out futon in a room that seemed to serve both as an office and a storage closet to rest and recover. As he sat drinking and willing his heart rate to slow, Chengling appeared in the doorway. 

“Zhou-shu… what’s going on? Why…?” 

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” Zhou Zishu grunted, hoarse from pain and fatigue. 

“What?” 

Utterly hopeless, this kid. 

“We were being tracked,” Zhou Zishu clarified wearily, “and I was too stupid to look a gift horse in the mouth, so now your uncle’s little gifts have to go. Don’t look so sad for me, twerp, I've survived worse than this. Besides, the friend we’re visiting might be able to help.” 

“Who is your friend?” 

Now there's a question. More than one man has died trying to answer it. 

Zhou Zishu paused for a moment, unsure of where to begin. In the end he explained that Qi Ye had been a famous hacker back when Chengling was just a baby, or maybe before he was born. The man behind the handle was one of Zhou Zishu’s oldest colleagues, but he’d gone and gotten himself embroiled in some extremely messy political (and personal) matters, and in order to protect his own life and stay out of prison had opted to fake his own death and go offline permanently. 

“He knew too much,” Zhou Zishu struggled to explain without revealing anything too personal, “about some very powerful men in this country, and they were going to be very unhappy about the idea of him moving beyond our borders and out of their sight. It’s a professional risk when your job concerns itself with shady grey-ops shit – the kind of work where people talk a lot about how the ends justify the means, if you take my meaning. Getting out of here was the best thing he ever did, though. Cutting ties is sometimes the only thing you can do to stay sane.”

“But didn’t they let you leave?” Chengling asked, confused. 

Maye the little idiot isn’t totally hopeless after all. 

“That they did,” Zhou Zishu sighed, taking a deep swig of the booze, “after the doctors confirmed I have less than a year to live and I signed a DNR declining to have my consciousness uploaded to the network.” 

Chengling looked stricken at that casual admission, far more than Zhou Zishu might have expected.

“How can your hacker friend help with this?” he finally asked in a small voice.

“His husband is a doctor,” Zhou Zishu grinned, “and at the very least he’ll have some pain medication on hand. Beyond that, we’ll see. But the really cool thing is, he builds synth suits -- synthetic bodies.”

Chengling stared at him blankly, clearly not following the relevance of that statement. 

“There’s no way you haven’t seen the advertisements,”Zhou Zishu insists, “I don’t care what rock you’ve been living under. The ones promising synthetic bodies that the wealthy and elite can buy to house their minds, so they can – for enough money to buy a small country – avoid the tragic inconveniences of age and illness?”

“I’ve seen the ads, but what good is that to us? Do you have enough money to buy a small country?”

Zhou Zishu snorted a laugh, “Hardly. But it does mean my friend has a lot of odds and ends on hand that might help keep me going a little farther past my expiration date. He better. He owes me one.” 

“It’s pretty weird that someone so invested in tech would be happy living off-grid like you’re describing.” 

“It makes perfect sense, actually. Synth suits are very, very tetchy work. It’s extremely lucrative and in high demand, but there aren’t more than six or seven people on earth who have succeeded at creating a fully functional prototype. Wuxi is no safer in the network than Qi Ye is. The last thing he needs is to get hacked by a Scorpion or infected with malware from a Ghost – the ramifications of a data breach would be… really bad. Like, really bad. So, he works offline, and there isn’t a single plug or dongle on his local network that is in any way connected to the Jianghu.” 

Chengling nodded, then scrunched up his face and admitted, “I have another question but I feel stupid asking.” 

Zhou Zishu shrugged and rolled his shoulder, trying to calm a spasming muscle in his neck. 

“Maybe it is stupid, but you’ll probably feel stupider for not asking, if it’s important,” he pointed out. 

Chengling paused for a moment and then, looking sheepish, finally asked, “Okay, so… what… What are the Ghosts? Like – I know they’re bad. I always hear how bad they are. But what are they, exactly?”

For a moment Zhou Zishu could only stare. Then, as Chengling’s face started to fade from sheepish to ashamed, he replied, “It’s not that it’s a stupid question. It’s that it’s hard to believe your parents never told you. It’s like… basic information you need to keep yourself safe. Ghosts are rogue AI programs, mostly. They’re not fully sentient, but they’ve taken in enough information that they can fake it pretty well. We call them "Ghosts" because they're not really people, and their presence in the network is known as haunting. The exception is the Ten Devils – those gangsters all used to be human, mostly from the old days when we were still working out the kinks in the process to upload consciousness. The consciousness files were all… corrupted… in some way. They’re all damaged, broken because we broke them. It’s like fuckin’ comic book villains, really. But in the end they all went rogue too, and they’re basically crime bosses now. They’ve been around so long, I don’t think they see themselves as human anymore.”

Chengling nodded and Zhou Zishu could practically see his brain trying to process the implied horrors.

Zhou Zishu fell quiet as his mind turned for some reason to Gu Xiang, who was, when he thought more about it, sort of like the opposite of the Devils: a program so nurtured it seemed like a human mind, not a human mind who has lost its humanity through neglect and abuse. 

The idea that Wen Kexing succeeded at this was staggering. The idea that he was able to “raise” her like a real girl, effecting enough delicate edits and patches that she appeared to be fully sentient was honestly mind-blowing. 

I can’t wait for Wuxi to pick his brain. 

That thought made him feel fond, which in turn made him annoyed not to have Wen Kexing at his side. And that made him irritated to be so pathetic and needy, not to mention dizzy and in pain. 

Chengling yawned wide enough that he looked like his jaw might come unhinged.

“Come on kid,” Zhou Zishu murmured, “get some sleep. Tomorrow we'll spend the day in the network so Ping’an can transport us as cargo instead of passengers. But before that, get some real sleep.”

“You too,” the kid said, clearly doing his best to look stern. The attempt was pathetic, but admittedly endearing. 

“Fair enough,” Zhou Zishu smiled, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Chapter Text

After entrusting their sleeping bodies to Ping’an and the cryo chambers Zhou Zishu and Chengling made their way to their assigned train car within the network. Wen Kexing was already there, talking to Gu Xiang on Zhou Zishu’s data pad. Chengling perked up at the sound of her bright young voice and went to peer over Wen Kexing’s shoulder as she spun the tale of her flight from Yueyang after Gao Chong’s murder and the resulting chaos in its aftermath. She had gone to ground and run out of town with Gao Xiaolian and a young man named Cao Weining, and they were currently hiding out at the Gentle Wind Collective where the boy was based. 

“Good,” Wen Kexing told her, “lay low. Ge is gonna be out of touch for a day or so. Okay? But nothing is wrong. Don’t worry and don’t do anything impulsive.” 

“Is that really so strange?” Chengling wanted to know. “They must be very close.” 

“Yes,” Zhou Zishu agreed, then paused for a moment to ponder how much to share. “Also… Wen Kexing’s human body is… He doesn’t have one anymore.”

As he spoke he studied Chengling’s face to gauge his reaction. Considering the boy’s sheltered upbringing Zhou Zishu was worried that it would be unsettling to him, to learn he’d befriended a dead man. He was pleasantly surprised when Chengling seemed to take it entirely in stride. 

“Yeah, okay. That makes sense,” he nodded, then pulled out a pair of headphones and a small datapad he must have gotten from Ping’an, and retreated into some kind of musical album or video game. 

Fair enough. This is far from the strangest thing to happen to him recently.

Wen Kexing watched the whole exchange with a watery eye, clearly feeling moved, but doing his best to hide that fact. It was… endearing. 

On the data pad’s screen Cao Weining looked at Gu Xiang like she was the most marvelous girl he had ever known. Zhou Zishu wondered how much of the truth he’d been made aware of.

All at once Wen Kexing’s posture went rigid. The connection on the data pad went dead. Mere seconds later the air shimmered and a pair of figures appeared in their otherwise unoccupied train car.

These two were the kind of muscular, bulky avatars you might see working as bouncers in clubs or used for playing combat games, designed for intimidation and violence. 

Before Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing had time to react to the intrusion a third figure appeared behind the first two. This was a slender, beautiful, androgynous young man with a breathtaking face, cheekbones that could cut glass, and the coldest, most snake-like eyes Zhou Zishu could remember seeing. His hair was stylishly shaved on one side and the rest of it fell in a black curtain in a severe, angled bob towards one shoulder. He wore a skin-tight pair of black pants and a sheer button down top unbuttoned so far that Zhou Zishu could see the entirety of the scorpion tattoo that wrapped from his collarbone, over his pec, and down his ribs to curve around his waist. 

“Xie Wang,” Wen Kexing growled. 

The beautiful boy smiled sweetly and said only, “Sic, puppies,” a clear command to his henchmen. 

The other two men attacked. 

Zhou Zishu’s avatar was almost as depleted and weak as his body was outside the network, sluggish and disoriented from the abrupt and painful removal of the mods from Zhao Jing. He honestly hadn’re realized how much they’d been helping with his pain and fatigue, until he had to rip them out. 

He glanced towards Wen Kexing with a question in his eyes, but Wen Kexing just shook his head minutely. There was no way for him to take out the intruders without causing enough damage to risk taking out both Zhou Zishu and Chengling. 

Dammit. 

A familiar spike of adrenaline hit as Zhou Zishu punched in a quick sequence of buttons on the datapad. There were at least a few advantages to having one’s endocrine system hacked, after all.

Facing off with one of the big, angry looking bastards he narrowed his eyes and dropped the pad on the seat behind him. 

“Wanna dance, fucker?” he grinned darkly. 

The man gave him an ugly, toothy smile in return and settled into a fighting stance, sizing Zhou Zishu up. Out of the corner of his eye Zhou Zishu saw Wen Kexing doing the same with the other big guy. Xie Wang chuckled and backed against the wall of the compartment into the hallway to avoid getting caught in the middle of the fight. Chengling cowered in the corner with both data pads and his backpack, either to protect them or shield himself. (With that kid, Zhou Zishu honestly wasn’t sure which option was more likely.) The whole compartment was thick with tension. The two big guys took a step forward in perfect unison, as though choreographed. 

Fucking creeps. 

Before anyone could throw a punch, however, the sound of heavy footfalls in the hallway alerted them to another presence. A moment later a fourth figure rounded the corner through the ruined door, a glitchy, semi-pixelated avatar with wild eyes and disheveled hair. 

With a scream of rage the man surged forward, pulling a knife out of thin air (literally) and stabbing it into the man facing off with Wen Kexing, right into the base of his skull. Before the body had hit the floor the newcomer spun on his heel and produced another knife out of nowhere, throwing it neatly into the chest of Zhou Zishu’s would-be assailant. 

The man fell crashing to the ground gasping and foaming blood from his mouth, no doubt from a punctured lung, but it certainly did call to mind the special effects from a campy old wuxia drama, Zhou Zishu was amused to note. 

Without missing a beat, Wen Kexing leaped forward in a blur of motion to grab their mysterious rescuer by the hair and into a secure headlock.

“What dog do you have in this fight, Five Lakes Scum?”

Five Lakes… of course, Zhou Zishu realized. This must be-–

“Shen-shushu?” Chengling cried out in shock.

It was, in fact, Shen Shen, in such disarray that he was almost unrecognizable. 

Chengling stared at him with a wariness  in his eyes that made Zhou Zishu feel like the boy might not be a totally lost cause. They knew now that Zhao Jing was guilty, but that alone wasn’t enough to prove Shen Shen’s innocence. 

Zhou Zishu put himself between the two of them, pulling Shen Shen’s attention from the kid. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked plainly. 

Shen Shen raised an eyebrow and said, “You’re welcome for saving your asses.”

“We had it under control,” Zhou Zishu lied smoothly. “Answer the question.” 

Shen Shen glanced between Chengling and Zhou Zishu. If he were observant, it would be clear that the kid was leaning towards him, and not away, and that his body language indicated trust. If he were smart he would see that and know that Zhou Zishu meant the kid no harm, and that there would be no need for further violence. 

Zhou Zishu trusted neither that Shen Shen was smart, nor that he was observant. He did not relax from his fighting stance. 

“Chengling, are you okay? We’ve been looking for you ev–”

“Answer the question,” Zhou Zishu interrupted. 

Wen Kexing took one silent, menacing step forward. 

“Gao Chong was murdered, slandered, defamed. His daughter Xiaolian is missing. Zhang Yusen’s family was massacred. His son Chengling is missing. Five Lakes is in crisis and my second brother is dealing with that. I was just trying to find my niece, and I got a tip that Chengling had been seen near the train station where I assume you boarded.”

“They didn’t hurt me, Shen-shushu,” Chengling piped up urgently. “They didn’t take me.” 

“Where are you taking him?” Shen Shen demanded.

“None of your business,” Zhou Zishu replied, cold as ice.

“I think it is.” 

“Right,” Wen Kexing chimed in in a pointedly sweet tone, “because your little ‘family’ has done such a great job of protecting the children so far. Clearly, he’d be safer with you. What, again, did you say happened to Gao Chong’s girl?”

Shen Shen’s face darkened in anger and embarrassment. “What have you heard?”

“Only a rumor that she went on the run to escape being kidnapped or murdered.” 

The anger on Shen Shen’s face shifted in a second into grief and distress. “Who told you that? If you know anything that could lead me to her, please. I have to find her. Please. My Dage– I owe him this much. Please.”

“We heard it from a newscast,” Zhou Zishu replied. He'd be damned if he'd send this man to Gentle Wind and put Gu Xiang at risk.

Chengling shifted on his feet behind Zhou Zishu, clearly uneasy with the lie. Wen Kexing glared up at the boy over Shen Shen’s shoulder, and the look on his face made Chengling shrink farther behind Zhou Zishu.

Shen Shen turned his attention to Wen Kexing for the first time, and his face turned puzzled. “Do I know you?”

Wen Kexing blinked fast a few times – he hadn’t been expecting that – and shook his head. “No, of course not.”

“No, I do. I know you from somewhere. Why do you look so familiar? You remind me of…”

Zhou Zishu noticed with alarm that Wen Kexing suddenly looked unsteady on his feet. He shook his head again and made a confused noise, and then just as before, his avatar was flickering like he was experiencing a one-man internet outage. 

Fuck, he’s glitching. Why does that keep happening? 

“He’s not from around here,” Zhou Zishu spoke up, trying to sound nonchalant as he tried to distract Shen Shen from whatever was going on with Wen Kexing. “I’m sure that must be a coincidence.” 

Shen Shen’s eyes flashed in annoyance. He was clearly tired of being denied information. The tension in the train car spiked high once more.

The adrenaline he’d injected into his system was already starting to wear off due to inactivity, but Zhou Zishu tried his best to prepare for a fight. 

But then, suddenly and almost too fast to see, Xie Wang appeared at Shen Shen’s side. 

Fuck, we forgot about him.

“Perception shields are illegal,” Wen Kexing observed. 

“Wow, gosh,” Xie Wang replied, “I guess that means I’m a criminal! In that case I should fit right in, here.”  

“Xie Wang?” Shen Shen looked utterly bewildered. “I thought you were in Yueyang with my Erge, what are you–”

“Oh! Funny story,” Xie Wang began in a bright, cheerful tone. As he spoke he produced a stiletto knife from somewhere Zhou Zishu couldn't quite see, and in one, fluid motion raised his arm up to embed the full length of it in Shen Shen’s ear canal.

Chengling screamed as Shen Shen’s lifeless body hit the ground.

Oh, Zhou Zishu thought dumbly, I guess he wasn’t colluding with the Scorpions after all.

That answered that.

Xie Wang took a step towards Zhou Zishu and Chengling with a menacing smirk on his pretty face. Wen Kexing was too fast for him, though. He waved a hand and the window of the train car simply…vanished... and the deafening din of rushing wind filled the car. 

Xie Wang turned to look at the window to discern the cause of the sudden noise and while he was distracted Wen Kexing picked him up as though he weighed no more than a child, and threw him out of it. With a satisfied smile he waved his hand a second time and the window reappeared, as though it had never been otherwise. 

Chengling squeaked, eyes wide enough to fall out of his skull.

Wen Kexing avoided the child's shocked gaze and instead inspected his fingernails as though there was a chance they might have been damaged during that little stunt.

“Are they still tracking us somehow?” Zhou Zishu wanted to know.

“I don't think so,” Wen Kexing replied thoughtfully, “they were probably just extrapolating our location based on the intel they had before you removed the modifications."

Zhou Zishu nodded slowly. He trusted Wen Kexing, but he was still worried. 

“So, with any luck they’ll only know we were here, and not where we were headed,” Chengling said in a quiet voice, asking for reassurance as much as he was offering comfort.

Right, because we always have good luck, it’s what we’re known for.

Zhou Zishu didn't say that out loud, though. He just gave Chengling a tired smile and reached out to ruffle his hair. 

Once the situation deescalated Chengling retreated into a pair of headphones and his data pad. Zhou Zishu was relieved to be ignored. The kid was still as green and naive as a baby and looked to him constantly for cues on how to act or interpret basically everything. It was frankly exhausting to maintain that level of steadiness and assurance.

He sagged into the seat on the opposite bench and leaned his elbows on the surface of the small table to massage his temples wearily. Wen Kexing slipped in silently beside him.

“A-Xu, are you okay?” he eventually asked with a cautious, searching look on his face.   

“Whatever you’re thinking,” he grumbled, “just fucking say it. I’m too tired to play any damn guessing games.” The adrenaline had completely worn off by then, leaving Zhou Zishu crabby and headachey. 

Wen Kexing pursed his lips in concern and annoyance, and blurted, “Were you going to tell me you’re actually dying?” 

Fuck. Do we really, really have to have this conversation right now? Really?

“I told you before, It's not my fault you didn't take me seriously,” he responded tartly. Then, more cautiously, “How did you even find more information about that?”

“I hacked your medical records while you were sleeping. How could you keep something like this from me? After everything, I…” Wen Kexing trailed off. He looked more miserable and pathetic than Zhou Zisu had ever seen him. It made him want to punch a wall. 

“What do you care?” Zhou Zishu muttered, looking down at the table.

“A-Xu, please. Of course I care. Isn’t it obvious? Haven’t I proved that much?” Wen Kexing reached across the table towards Zhou Zishu’s arm, then stopped mid-motion, hesitating.

“You’re an idiot, then. You shouldn’t care.” 

“Why on Earth not?” 

“Aside from the fact that I’m dying? Isn’t that enough? What the hell do you want!?”  

What could I possibly have to offer you that’s worth having? 

Wen Kexing gave an exasperated sigh, glaring as he replied, “Can you really still not figure it out?”

“No! Okay? I can’t. I’m stupid, I guess. I have no fucking clue. You literally just appeared out of nowhere one day, and I have no idea why you stayed. What the hell do you want from me?”

“I just… want to be with you. That’s all I want. A-Xu, let’s get married.”

Zhou Zishu’s face heated up like it’s on fire. He’s sure his expression was comically stupid, but he couldn’t think coherently enough to fix it. “What the fuck?” he stammered eventually, “Are you serious? You don’t even know me.”

“Yes. I do. And I’m extremely serious.” 

Zhou Zishu stared at Wen Kexing’s perfect face for the better part of a minute, searching for any twitch or shadow that might indicate that this was just some kind of awful joke. Finding none, he shook his head slowly and declared, “You’re insane.” 

Something in his tone or expression made Wen Kexing chuckle softly.  “Isn’t everyone?” he smiled with indulgent eyes. And then, “A-Xu. Marry me. Say yes.” 

“I—- I’m dying,” Zhou Zishu responded helplessly, absolutely sure his avatar was blushing. 

Wen Kexing’s smile broadened, “That isn’t a ‘no.’” 

Zhou Zishu’s pulse was racing, but he couldn’t help smiling back, only a little bewildered as he replied, “Huh, I guess it isn’t.” 

“Besides,” Wen Kexing pointed out diplomatically, “It would be terribly hypocritical for me to hold that against you. I’m already dead.” 

Zhou Zishu stared at Wen Kexing in perfect, stunned silence for a moment before they both burst out laughing.  

They laughed until Zhou Zishu’s face hurt. God, it felt good to laugh. Wen Kexing looked happy, too, for the first time all day, and that was a truly beautiful sight. 

For the first time in years Zhou Zishu found himself wondering about ways to preserve his consciousness after death. It was… it was very late to make arrangements at this point. Most people have such things set up years before it’s needed but maybe-–

He was pulled abruptly from his thoughts by a wave of his chronic pain acting up. It was a dull, aching feeling – like growing pains, except the exact opposite – since he could only feel a shadow of his physical body, but even so, it was extremely distracting and the drain on his energy was high. He was unable to contain a wince of discomfort. 

Wen Kexing reached for him and pressed against his temples with both thumbs.

Instantaneously Zhou Zishu’s discomfort subsided, and he felt himself getting drowsy. 

“What did you do to me?” he murmured, fighting the heaviness of his limbs. 

“I changed your hormone levels so you can sleep. You need rest.”

“God dammit, Lao Wen. You can’t just go… you can’t go fucking around with people’s endocrine systems without asking!”

“I can, though.”

“I meant don’t,” Zhou Zishu complained around a yawn.  

“Fine, okay. If you say so. But I already did it this time so please, will you just rest? I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”

It was a compelling enough argument. 

Zhou Zishu slept. 

Some time later Zhou Zishu woke to the sensation of the train pulling into a station. They’d finally arrived at their destination outside Nanjiang. 

“Here already?” he croaked, rolling his neck and shoulders to help his body awaken. 

“You were sleeping soundly,” Wen Kexing smiled softly, looking pleased. “It’s been almost three hours. He’s still out too," he gestured to where Chengling still dozed on the opposite bench, arms curled around his data pad like a teddy bear. 

Stupid brat, Zhou Zishu thought fondly. 

He retrieved a small, high capacity data stick from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to Wen Kexing to examine. 

“This looks and feels exactly like the one I’ve got in my pocket out there,” he explains. “I don’t know how you, uh, do your code-entity thing to get from place to place. But I need you to go in there now, so I can carry you out of here.”  

Wen Kexing wrinkled his nose and grumbled, “A-Xu, this is only five terabytes. It’s like a prison cell. Is it even formatted at all? Is there even furniture in there?” 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes. This fucking diva. 

“You’re welcome to stay here if you like,” he replied with a pointed look.

Wen Kexing narrowed his eyes and pouted. He didn’t like that option at all, clearly, but he was still hesitant. 

He must really be nervous about this. 

“Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu reached out and touched the back of Wen Kexing’s hand, “do you trust me?”

Wen Kexing stared into his face, searching. Slowly, he nodded. 

“I won’t let you out of my sight,” Zhou Zishu promised. And then, to cover up the unbearable soft feeling spreading through his belly at Wen Kexing’s grateful smile, he added, “After all, I wouldn’t want an unholy terror like you to fall into the wrong hands. It would be inhumane of me to inflict torture like that on an unsuspecting person.”

“A-Xu!”

Zhou Zishu flashed his most winning smile, then leaned in to steal a kiss. It was an obviously calculated attack, intended to manipulate and distract. (It worked.) 

Ten minutes later Zhou Zishu was rumpled and flushed, and Wen Kexing had left the Jianghu Network entirely for the first time in decades, waiting to be uploaded to Jing Beiyuan’s LAN on the tiny hard drive Zhou Zishu now carried. 

Like a genie in a tiny little lamp, he chuckled to himself. 

“We’re here,” he barked, nudging at Chengling’s shin with the toe of his boot. The boy’s eyes popped open and he sat up fast, bleary and disoriented. Zhou Zishu laughed. A second later his data pad beeped with a notification from Ping’An that it was time to wake up. 

*********

Waking up in realspace immediately seemed like a bad idea. Everything hurt as Zhou Zishu sat up: the bone-deep throbbing from the freshly ripped out mods, the itching burn from the mods he’d had for years, the typical, lethargic dehydration headache from being in the network too long, the stabbing complaints of his eyes as they were made to look out at a sky with a real sun in it… all of it. Zhou Zishu wasn’t sure whether he wanted to vomit or faint. Both? Both. 

“Are you okay, Mister Zhou?” Ping’An asked with concern, disconnecting the wires and helping him make his way out of the cryo bed.

“It’s fine,” Zhou Zishu replied, trapping a groan of pain in his throat as he moved from a seated to a standing position and forced his legs to start moving. 

Chengling and Ping’an exchanged a glance that Zhou Zishu pretended not to see, because he didn’t have the energy to tell them off right then. Slowly, letting Zhou Zishu set the pace, the three of them made their way from the train to the car. 

The drive took them down a private, poorly paved road in the middle of a patch of forest that had somehow never been properly developed – no doubt protected by one of the conservation bills the government had tried introducing a few decades earlier. 

Along the way Ping’an rolled down the windows for the simple novelty of breathing fresh, clean air. Zhou Zishu had never much understood the appeal of nature; the blooming flowers made his eyes itch, but he couldn't bear to make Ping’an close the windows again with Chengling hanging halfway outside of the car as happy as a big, dumb dog. 

The road was treacherous, the roots from the surrounding trees having wreaked havoc on the pavement for years without proper maintenance, and the journey was winding and circuitous enough that Zhou Zishu wouldn’t ever want to make it without proper nav computers and a map. Knowing the residents, he was certain that the state of disrepair was a calculated, intentional deterrent for visitors rather than a sign of neglect.

Some time later they reached a heavy, rusted metal gate at the edge of the compound which gave way on their approach, the security light flipping from a flashing orange to a cheerful, friendly green as they passed through. From there the road dipped down behind and around a steep hill before a sprawling ranch-style house and a spacious barn came suddenly into view, nestled up against a quaint, vintage-style vegetable garden and enclosed yard filled with farm animals.

“Zishu!” called a familiar, fond voice as Ping’an pulled into the driveway, “is that really you? I can’t believe it.” 

It had been almost a decade since they last met, but that hadn’t changed the fact that Jing Beiyuan was still the most beautiful man Zhou Zishu had ever seen – the kind of radiant loveliness that one usually only saw on Jianghu avatars designed specifically to attract romantic attention. If anything, the years had softened and mellowed his good looks, the crinkly laugh lines around his eyes and a little extra color on his cheeks and forearms from time spent outdoors aging him like a fine wine. He was wearing a loose-fitting pair of jeans and a faded green linen shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his long hair was caught in a messy knot at the base of his skull, with scuffed leather shoes and not a single flash of diamond or platinum in sight.  

Happy, Zhou Zishu realized. He looks happy.  

Aloud he called out, “Fucking hell. Jing Beiyuan, you are a sight for sore eyes,” and approached him with a face-splitting grin. 

“My god, man, where the hell have you been?” Jing Beiyuan greeted him with a strong, warm hug. “You look like absolute shit, darling, what have you done to yourself?” 

“Work,” Zhou Zishu shrugged.

Jing Beiyuan’s eyes narrowed and his pretty mouth drew into an angry moue. “That cousin of mine hasn’t changed since I left, I see.” 

“Leave it, Beiyuan. I’m out now, just… let’s not focus on that. We have more important things to talk about today.” 

“And who is this?” Jing Beiyuan asked, turning to face Chengling with a curious smile. 

The boy was staring at him, slack-jawed and wide eyed. It was somehow reassuring to see that, in a world where everything seemed to be constantly changing and usually for the worse, Jing Beiyuan’s ability to take unsuspecting strangers off guard with his dazzling, unearthly beauty and charisma was apparently a universal constant. 

“He’s a stray puppy I found rooting around in the garbage the other day,” Zhou Zishu complained amiably. “I made the mistake of feeding him once and now I can’t get rid of him."

Chengling gave Zhou Zishu a wounded, betrayed look that, frankly, only supported his claim. Zhou Zishu laughed and ruffled his hair. 

The kid scoffed, embarrassed, and pulled away with a scowl, then turned to Jing Beiyuan again and answered him, “I'm Zhang Chengling, sir, thank you for having us.” He punctuated his words with a short bow, more polite and proper than Zhou Zishu had ever seen him. 

“My goodness,” Jing Beiyuan smiled, “so polite! Zishu, can we keep him? Our Lu Ta is absolutely feral these days, he could stand to learn a thing or two about manners from a peer.”

“Hmmmm, that depends. What’ll you give me in exchange?” Zhou ZIshu inquired, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Chengling’s eyes shifted between them like he wasn’t sure whether or not they were kidding. 

Jing Beiyuan snickered and winked at Chengling conspiratorially – which did nothing to assuage the boy’s concerns, but did make him blush – and then gestured towards the house. 

“Please, let’s go inside. You must be starving after your journey, and Wuxi must have lunch almost ready by now.” 

They made their way inside and through a well-appointed living room in elegant shades of grey and white. Each window was filled with exotic potted plants, and the furniture was tastefully expensive-looking – chic, but still inviting enough to sit on. In the spacious, luxurious kitchen, a tall, clean-cut figure with broad shoulders and a tan stood barefooted over a sizzling wok in tortoiseshell glasses and an untucked black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up over soft grey tailored pants. 

“Wuxi! They’re here!” Jing Beiyuan called, “turn that off and come say hello.” 

Wuxi!? Okay. 

Wuxi was reputed to have been one of the shrewdest CEO’s in the history of the internet. He was also a brilliant scientist and his doctorate thesis on biomechanics and integrative technology was still a lynchpin of the field even ten years later. He was also, if you knew where to look for him, one of the most terrifyingly competent PVP fighters the Jianghu Network had ever seen. Therefore, Zhou Zishu thought it was perhaps forgivable that he didn’t realize at first glance that the domestic, bespectacled man in the kitchen was, in fact, his friend and one of the scariest men currently alive. 

“Zishu!” Wuxi smiled broadly, wiping his hands on the simple black apron slung low on his hips as he turned to face them. “It’s good to see you, friend. Come. Let me take a look at you.”

Chapter Text

Dinner was a jovial, relaxing affair - no doubt a combination of good food, good drinks, and the confidence that Zhou Zishu and Chengling were completely, utterly safe here, and completely removed from the dangers they had been facing for the past few weeks. And it was good to catch up with these two, probably the dearest friends Zhou Zishu had ever known.  It had been too long… but in the early days, he’d worried that contacting them might compromise their security. And then later he’d fallen out of the habit, so even when people stopped searching for him, Zhou Zishu still hadn’t initiated contact. He’s just grateful they were there now, and so welcoming of these fugitives in the home they shared. 

After dinner Wuxi took neural scans of Zhou Zishu and Chengling. The boy was given a clean bill of health and sent off to make himself at home with Lu Ta’s extensive library of video games. “Our son is about your age,” Wuxi told him. “I’m sure he’ll have something you enjoy in there.” 

“Mmm,” Jing Beiyuan nodded in agreement, “He’s away at school right now, but he comes home most weekends. If you stay for a few days you’ll be able to meet him.”

Zhou Zishu was grateful that they were both focused on the boy and not looking at whatever his face was likely doing at the notion of these two shady bastards co-parenting a teenager – let alone doing what appeared to be a good job at it. He felt like he was in an alternate dimension. Maybe he was… it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him recently.  

Wuxi turned to Zhou Zishu as soon as the boy was gone and narrowed his eyes, and glared, “Zishu.” 

He said nothing else, only held up the data pad with Zhou Zishu’s medical chart on it, managing to look both accusing and disappointed at once — an innate skill expertly honed by fatherhood, no doubt. 

“I know,” Zhou Zishu sighed. Wuxi only glared harder. 

Jing Beiyuan looked back and forth between them in silence for a moment, his lovely face growing concerned.

“What are you two talking about? Why are you so upset, Wuxi?” 

Wuxi didn’t reply, but handed over the datapad to Jing Beiyuan so he could see for himself. As he started reading Jing Beiyuan’s expression shifted from concerned to horrified. “What have they done to you? My cousin, he– They’ve gone too far.” 

“It wasn’t him. I did this to myself.” 

“Zishu, these readings… you’re…” Jing Beiyuan looked sick. 

“I know.”

“How long?” 

Zhou Zishu shrugged. “A few months.”

“Can’t you help him?” Jing Beiyuan asked Wuxi, sounding uncharacteristically meek. 

“Maybe,” Wuxi replied with a small, tight smile, patting his husband’s shoulder in a familiar, comforting gesture.. “I need to run some more tests.” 

“Run all the tests you want,” Zhou Zishu told him, legitimately shocked to hear that there might be a chance to improve his health at all, “but later. We have more important things to do now.” 

“This isn’t why you came?” Jing Beiyuan wanted to know. “What could be more pressing than this? Why exactly are you here?”

Zhou Zishu sighed. Where the hell to start? “Well,” he began slowly, “before we get into that, can we jump onto your LAN? This will be easier to explain online –” he holds up the drive with Wen Kexing in one hand “– because one of us is actually incorporeal these days.”  

They adjourned to a small private network partition – little more than a conference room, really. Sitting down at the large, oval table brought back an odd sense of deja vu. It had been years since Zhou Zishu last encountered these particular avatars online, but once upon a time they had spent hours upon hours at this table, working, plotting, scheming. Drinking. 

Jing Beiyuan’s online avatar looked like himself at twenty-five. An outsider might assume the youthful appearance was due to vanity but Zhou Zishu knew that it was far more likely that he just hadn’t bothered updating its appearance in… fourteen, fifteen years? He never had the occasion to use it anymore. 

Wuxi also resembled himself but at a more current age, and with long, intricately braided hair – a nod to his distant heritage –  instead of the low-maintenance undercut he favored in realspace.

Wen Kexing joined them moments later, wary and uncharacteristically quiet, taking things in. 

Zhou Zishu imagined it had to be odd for him to be cut off from the Jianghu after so many years inside. 

“Zishu!” Jing Beiyuan exclaimed in a gossipy purr “you didn’t tell me your friend was so gorgeous!” 

Zhou Zishu made a face, grumbling, “Beiyuan…” This meddlesome prick… 

“Yes, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing turned to him with a chilling smile, “you didn’t tell me your friend was so gorgeous.” 

Zhou Zishu rolled his eyes at Wen Kexing and scoffed, “Lao Wen, how is that relevant to anything?” 

Across the table Wuxi’s lips quirked into a small smile of amusement. 

Looking between them Jing Beiyuan’s eyes flashed with suspicion, either at their tone or their body language. He leaned forward, steepling his hands and grinning wickedly, “Zishu. Aren’t you going to tell m–” 

All of a sudden his voice cut off, leaving his mouth moving without a single sound, no matter how much effort he made to speak. He looked about as shocked and outraged as a cat dropped in a bathtub.

Across the table Wuxi looked pleased. “Hm. I was wondering if that still worked.” 

Oh my god! Zhou Zishu made a strangled noise as he choked back a laugh at his friend’s furious death glare.

“What on Earth…?” Wen Kexing seemed utterly bewildered. 

Wuxi gave him a smug smile and explained, “It’s an in-game spell I coded years ago to use during our Dragon Gate campaigns back when we were teenagers and heavily into gaming.”

“You wrote game code for a specialized spell just for…”

“To shut him up? Yes. It was… necessary.” 

Jing Beiyuan reached over and smacked his husband on the shoulder, huffing air out of his nose in furious indignation. This only caused Wuxi to look at him, unimpressed, and raise an eyebrow. 

“Calm down, you brat, it only lasts for ten minutes. If you’re interrupting them every five seconds to be awful, we’ll be here all night. Spend this time contemplating the merits of not being a meddlesome, insufferable bastard for once in your life.” 

Glaring, Jing Beiyuan attempted to upend his ever-present bottle of wine onto Wuxi’s head. Then Wuxi cast another gaming spell and the bottle vanished in mid-air. 

That was all it took to send Zhou Zishu off into a nearly hysterical fit of irrepressible laughter. The stress of the whole mess must have been getting to him more than he wanted to admit; usually his poker face was beyond reproach but if they’d been in realspace he would have been red-faced and crying, he knew. 

God damn, he’d missed these assholes. 

“I like him,” Wen Kexing grinned at Wuxi. 

“You have to teach me that spell,” Zhou Zishu wheezed  when he managed to get his breathing under control. “Does it work in realspace too?”

“If only,” Wuxi replied wistfully. 

“A-Xu!” Wen Kexing pouted. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew what that spell would end up being used for. 

“Well then, stop spouting bullshit all the time,” Zhou Zishu said, exasperated. “They’re married, Lao Wen. Beiyuan being good looking or not is none of my concern. And you are going to play nice, you horrible menace, because they are going to help us take down Zhao Jing.” 

Once an armistice had been reached between Jing Beiyuan and Wuxi they turned their attention to Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing so they could tell their stories. As they spoke Zhou Zishu was struck by the fact that it really didn’t seem like two separate stories at all. Wen Kexing’s decades-long search for his history and Chengling's escape with his life seemed to have too many factors in common to be coincidental. The tale also didn’t take very long to tell, which surprised him. The past weeks had felt like a lifetime unto themselves. Had he really only known Wen Kexing for so short a time? 

“...and so,” Zhou Zishu finished, “we came here to regroup, and to ask for help. Everyone knows that Qi Ye’s ability to find information is unparalleled. I would like to ask for your assistance investigating Five Lakes and Zhao Jing, to see if we can confirm our theories with facts. I’d like to impose on your generosity a little more, and ask Wuxi to borrow a synth suit for Lao Wen. There are things that need to be done in realspace and I’d rather have him here with me.”

“Of course we’ll help!” Jing Beiyuan exclaimed. “Even if you weren’t our dear friend, the intrigue here really is absolutely delicious. Even I need to know what happened, now. 

“Indeed,” Wuxi added, “I would be happy to see that justice is served to those who have done this, both to Wen-xiong and the boy. We can prepare a suit immediately. And Zizhu, if you don’t object I’d like to chip you with a tracker to transmit neural data back to me so we can find you if it comes to extremes.” 

“You want to low-jack his brain?” Wen Kexing asked with alarm. 

“I trust him,” Zhou Zishu told him, placating, “in fact he’s the only one I would trust to do it.” 

Wuxi turned to Wen Kexing, giving him a once-over. “I have enough parts to assemble a whole suit here. But I’ll need assistance narrowing down the appearance. Do you want to look like this?” he gestured towards Wen Kexing’s avatar. 

“I don’t care,” Wen Kexing said. “A-Xu can pick whatever he wants me to look like.” 

Jing Beiyuan’s eyes went up to his hairline. Zhou Zishu wanted to die. 

“I’ll make you a fucking slug, you pestilence,” he grumbled. 

“I’m not here to kink-shame you A-Xu. Whatever you think is most beautiful is fine with me.” 

At that, Jing Beiyuan laughed aloud, eyes crinkling with mirth as Wen Kexing preened under the attention. Even the serious Wuxi chuckled, looking at Zhou Zishu with a strange combination of sympathy and schadenfreude.

“Will you please stop talking?” Zhou Zishu begged Wen Kexing.

“Never,” the wretched man beamed at him beatifically. 

Once they’d ironed out the necessary questions and contingencies, Wuxi and Zhou Zishu went into realspace to work in Wuxi’s lab, while Jing Beiyuan enlisted Ping-an to work on untangling the trail of corruption. 

Just like old times. 

Using Wen Kexing’s striking, white-haired avatar as a template Wuxi began assembling the body, while Zhou Zishu worked on designing the face. 

“You are much more familiar with his looks than I am,” Wuxi commented mildly, with a side-eye in Zhou Zishu's direction. His unspoken curiosity was palpable. 

“Your husband’s nosiness is contagious, I see,” Zhou Zishu grunted. Wuxi grinned, Zhou Zishu’s spiky evasion having told him all he needed to know. 

Bit by bit over the following days the suit took shape: tall, broad frame, wiry muscles over delicate circuitry, synthetic organs protected by pale synthetic skin.

When it came to the more delicate design aspects like facial features and hair texture, Wuxi silently handed Zhou Zishu a datapad and asked him to choose from a list of drop-down menus. 

Just like creating an avatar in the Jianghu, he mused, except this one is flesh and blood. 

Zhou Zishu was unspeakably grateful that the more… intimate… details of Wen Kexing’s appearance were among those included in the menu. He would trust Wuxi with his life in a heartbeat, but he didn’t think he had a thick enough skin to bring himself to discuss in frank, clinical terms the size and shape of Wen Kexing’s cock, or the way he trimmed his pubic hair.  

While they worked Wuxi regarded Zhou Zishu with a doctor’s concern, noting with furrowed brow the slow and shaky way he moved, the hitches of breath when his pain flared, and what must have been a shocking lack of stamina compared to the vigor of his youth. Since he’d torn out Zhao Jing’s mods his condition had deteriorated significantly, and he didn’t have the energy to hide the discomfort he was in. 

“Zishu,” he offered on the third night as they were cleaning up the lab, “will you let me help? The advancements we’ve made in recent years could–”

“I don’t want to be a cyborg, Wuxi,” Zhou Zishu sighed, weary. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. If you want to help, I’d love it if you could make sure we’ve got a good, current, comprehensive copy of my consciousness saved and backed up for emergencies. I’d actually like to go on after it’s all done but…”

“But?” 

Zhou Zishu ducked his head, knowing how much he was revealing as he added, “but we can’t keep this suit you’re building forever. I know it costs more than I made in the whole of my career combined. If… If I want a second chance at life, it can be digital. It’s cheaper. I like it there. And without a suit like this one, that’s where he'll be.”

“Oh, I see,” Wuxi smiled kindly. Zhou Zishu wanted to punch him.  

“Shut up.” 

Mercifully, Wuxi did. He was nicer than his husband.  

On the fourth day Wuxi uploaded Wen Kexing’s mind from the data stick to the suit. 

Zhou Zishu thought it was pretty incredible, witnessing the moment when the suit they’d spent days assembling together stopped being a thing and started being a person – the moment consciousness sparked, and Wen Kexing breathed his first breath of air.  Slowly the wide, brown eyes opened, blinking sleepily into focus.

“A-Xu?” He looked disoriented. It was distressingly cute.

“Hey,” Zhou Zishu said, unable to resist reaching over and momentarily cupping his cheek, but dropping his hand when self consciousness got the better of him. Not that it would have mattered, he was sure the idiot grin on his own face was just as embarrassing-looking as the one on Wen Kexing’s. 

Slowly he helped Wen Kexing move to sit and tried not to find his current appearance – bare faced, bare footed, and clad only in an old pair of Jing Beiyuan’s old sweatpants – so endearing that he’d have to kiss him in front of Wuxi. It was a near thing. 

Wen Kexing was uncharacteristically quiet, sitting wide-eyed on the table, alternating between staring moony-eyed at Zhou Zishu and visually devouring every detail of the room around them. 

Wuxi hung back for a few minutes to give them the illusion of privacy, but when it became clear that Wen Kexing would be comfortable staring silently into Zhou Zishu’s eyes all day, he interrupted and kicked Zhou Zishu out of the room. 

“I need to run a few tests,” he explained, “which will go faster without distractions. Out, please. Go check on my husband and let him know the data transfer was a success.”  

He left them to it and headed to the main house, locating Jing Beiyuan in his study, sitting cross legged on the floor with a laptop on his knees, looking a little wild-eyed and unkempt in a way that made Zhou Zishu fondly nostalgic for all of the stimulant-fueled, corporation-toppling chaos of their sordid youth. 

“Have you slept at all?” he asked by way of a greeting, making his way to the bar cart and pouring himself three fingers of good whiskey. 

“Of course I have! What day is it? Hm. Maybe not last night. That doesn’t matter though. I’ve been following a delicious paper trail.” His eyes were sparkling with mania and mischief.

“Does my theory play?” Zhou Zishu asked.

“It plays all too well. If you trace the money – you know Ping’an is a genius at tracing the money –  all the evidence indicates an extremely high likelihood that Zhao Jing is the head of the Scorpion Cartel. Even the news headlines corroborate your theory;  every time something big happens for Zhao Jing’s investments, you can bet the Scorpions were causing chaos somewhere in the world less than a week earlier. Bring me a drink and come here. I’ll walk you through it.”

Following Jing Beiyuan’s fastidious trail of evidence it became increasingly clear that Zhao Jing was indeed responsible for the Rong family’s deaths all those years ago, and probably the Zhen’s as well. In fact, it turned out that he had been accused in both trials, but got away with convenient alibis that presented themselves at the last moment, and in both cases that fact had been hushed before the press had been able to publish anything incriminating.

Jing Beiyuan noted that he had also done some investigation into the individuals who had attacked them on their recent journey, recorded on the network’s CCTV train footage from that day. The two big guys had been nobodies, just goons hired as muscle, but the other one – that Xie Wang character – was an AI program, stolen  from a prominent designer almost twenty years earlier in a heist that had made international headlines. 

Originally created under a different name, Xie Wang’s patented technology had been state-of-the-art at the time. The word on the darknet was that the entity had been wiped and reprogrammed to think Zhao Jing was its owner.

“That happens all the time,” Zhou Zishu pointed out. “And you know as well as I do that as bad as these data breaches are now, they were worse a decade and a half ago.” 

“Yes of course,” Jing Beiyuan agreed, “but listen to this – it’s so much more fucked up than you think. This poor boy was written and designed to be a pleasure model, not an assassin at all. My sources find that this lunatic Zhao Jing has been experimenting on him to see how the devotion, the unquestioning loyalty, translates to action when he asks Xie Wang to kill for him. And how far he can stretch the original parameters of his behavior. If he were a human, this would be considered torture. Bastards like this are the reason we need better legislation for AI entities’ rights.”

Zhou Zishu frowned with distaste as he nodded. “Fuck, and of course pleasure entities always come with pre-programmed bodies. So not only does Zhao Jing have a leashed attack dog in the network, since all of these pleasure models come with fully-outfitted android bodies, he also has his own bespoke assassin in realspace.”

“Exactly. The scheme is honestly genius in its simplicity. I’m surprised no one else has done this yet. … No one that we know of.” 

Genius, and cruel. As if Zhou Zishu needed any more reasons to hate Zhao Jing. 

When Jing Beiyuan had finished going through his findings Zhou Zishu declared that it was time for them both to take a break and put down the computer. In Jing Beiyuan’s case, it was clearly long overdue. 

They emerged to find Wen Kexing and Chengling playing video games on the couch and laughing. Zhou Zishu swallowed against an unexpected lump in his throat when he realized that Chengling was teaching him, that he was trying to help Wen Kexing find his feet in realspace the same way Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu had helped him in the network. What a sweet damn kid. 

“It’s good for his dexterity,” Wuxi commented to Zhou Zishu as he walked to meet them, “he hasn't had hands in years.” 

He turned to peck Jing Beiyuan on the cheek, handing him a warm cup of tea, and sighed, ”You need to take a shower, Beiyuan. Lu Ta will be here in an hour, and you’re an absolute mess. Have you even washed your hair one since Zishu arrived?” 

“Lu Ta?” Jing Beiyuan’s brows knit in confusion, “But he’s not due ‘til the weekend, is he?” 

“Beiyuan, it’s Friday afternoon.”

“Oh… when did that happen?” Jing Beiyuan seemed legitimately confused by the passage of time. He excused himself to clean up a moment later, tea forgotten, as Wuxi shook his head at his retreating back. 

“I’m sorry,” Zhou Zishu smiled, “This is my fault. I know he retired for a reason, and now I’m here disrupting your peace.”

Wuxi rolled his eyes. “Don’t apologize. You know he’s having the time of his life right now. Beiyuan… Beiyuan occasionally needs environmental enrichment. And that’s fine, as long as I’m around to remind him to eat.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Zhou Zishu grinned, holding up his whiskey.

Wuxi shot him an unimpressed sideways glance then called out to Wen Kexing, “Kexing-xiong, this one forgets to eat too, you know. You’ll have to keep an eye on him for us in the future.” 

Wen Kexing nodded solemnly, accepting the burden of this great responsibility.

Traitor , Zhou Zishu glared at Wuxi affectionately. His face hurt from smiling so damn much.

Lu Ta was twelve now, almost thirteen, which meant he was old enough to be annoyed by his parents almost constantly, but young enough to be impressed and awed by Chengling’s august fifteen years. Chengling was too excited about the presence of another young person in the house to care about acting too cool to play with a younger boy, and Zhou Zishu also suspected that his comparatively sheltered upbringing put the two of them on somewhat more even footing, socially speaking, than their age difference might have implied. 

It only took about twenty minutes of interaction before the two of them were making enough noise to cause a disturbance in the house.

“Go outside ,” Wu Xi commanded after the third boisterous interruption of the adults’ dinner preparations. “Video games will still be here after dark. Get out, I’m done with you both.” 

This seemed like a familiar refrain to Lu Ta who smiled agreeably and grabbed a soccer ball as he stepped into his shoes, urging Chengling, “Come on! Let’s play! We have a goal set up on the archery range.” 

“The archery range!?” 

“Yeah! Have you tried shooting?”

“No!”

“I can teach you!” 

“Okay!”

Jing Beiyuan intercepted them at the door and handed over a bag filled with snacks, water bottles, and a portable speaker for playing music. Lu Ta tolerated a peck on the cheek with an eye roll and a wrinkled nose, Jing Beiyuan ruffled Chengling’s hair, and then they were off. 

“Oh my god,” Zhou Zishu marveled, “You’re such a dad now.” 

“You’re throwing a lot of stones from that glass house, Zishu.” 

“I am not, this is totally different.” … except for all the ways it wasn’t. Zhou Zishu was constantly worried about Chengling, about what could happen to him if their efforts against Zhao Jing turned violent, about how the risks he and Wen Kexing are about to take could affect him. It was the worry of a parent, he knew, despite his attempts to deny it. 

The kid was just so damn much like Jiuxiao. How was he not supposed to get attached? The thought of his lost foster brother still made his heart ache, all these years later. 

“He can stay here,” Jing Beiyuan said softly. He had always been too good at reading Zhou Zishu’s mind. “He can stay with us as long as you need, when you two go off to do what needs to be done.”

Zhou Zishu smiled sadly. “I’m not sure how long–”

“He can stay here,” Jing Beiyuan repeated, more firmly this time. If you die, he will be cared for, he didn’t say, but they Zhou Zishu understood anyway. 

“You’re a good friend, Beiyuan,” Zhou Zishu said gratefully. “Though his uncle may disagree with the arrangement.” 

“Adoption papers can be forged,” Ping’an commented mildly from his spot at the table. “I’ve already started drawing them up for you Zhou Laoban. It would be easy enough to change the names.” 

Adoption papers!?

“You two are an absolute menace,” Zhou Zishu laughed.

Ping’an’s smile was perfectly neutral, refined by a lifetime in PR and customer service, but his eyes were shining. Jing Beiyuan’s eyes glittered with mischief. 

Wen Kexing left the video games in the living room to come join them in the kitchen, less invested now that his young companions had been banished from the house. 

“Speaking of doing what must be done, is there a plan for us yet?” 

Wuxi nodded. “I reached out to the Sword Immortal after you told us that Wen-xiong had already been in touch with him. He is indeed keen to help clear this matter up and hold the people responsible accountable to the law. He says he wants to meet you.” 

“In the flesh!” Zhou Zishu exclaimed.

Wuxi nodded, “That’s the only way he’ll meet. I’d suggest coordinating with him and coming up with a plan together. The journey will take you a day, maybe two if you drive at a leisurely pace.”

Zhou Zishu turned to Wen Kexing, considering. “Two I think,” he said with a smile. 

“You can take one of our cars, of course,” Jing Beiyuan offered.

“Thanks,” Zhou Zishu says, “but…”

“But?”

Zhou Zishu turned and gave Wuxi a conspiratorial grin. “Do you still have that old bike of yours?” 

Chapter Text

On one of Wuxi’s custom built motorcycles Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu made their way down the mountain and around the coast, headed north. Objectively Zhou Zishu knew the scenery wasn’t much to look at, just the yellow-tinged water, grey skies filled with smog, and showers of acid rain you saw everywhere these days. The landscape was accented with the faded neon signage that seemed ever-present in coastal towns and settlements, a timeless homage to tourism in a world that had largely forgotten the industry of physical travel. 

At least the coastal cities didn’t get the huge dust storms that plagued inland dwellers, with those Category 6 winds that took down the power grids in all but the richest neighborhoods. All they had to worry about here was flooding.

They detoured through a town or two just to take in the sight, such as they were – ratty night clubs and run down streets, too many people living in close quarters. To Zhou Zishu it all seemed desolate, but Wen Kexing gasped and pointed and cooed like a two year old child in his first immersive VR sim. The unselfconscious, childlike wonder was so fucking cute Zhou Zishu wanted to punch him in the face. 

Idiot, he smiled inside his helmet. 

Even worse was the delighted enthusiasm Wen Kexing demonstrated over their lunch. It was nothing but unremarkable takeout – a half dozen dumplings, a passable bowl of ramen, and a dish of acceptably sweet, lab-grown watermelon just a day past its prime. But to Wen Kexing it was a feast, and more than once Zhou Zishu had to remind him to keep his voice down; the noises he made while he was eating were positively pornographic. 

Slowly they made their way farther north and inland where Changming Mountain stood far away from the megacities and polluted rivers, one of the last remaining vistas where grass grew wild. If you were quiet you could hear live birds singing, just like old movies. Even a jaded old bastard like Zhou Zishu couldn’t help being charmed by so much clean air, open sky, and the near-absence of humanity’s filthy footprint. Then again, maybe he was just high on all the available oxygen.

He was even more reluctantly charmed by Wen Kexing's first real explorations into nature – the plants and trees and creatures who still made this sliver of forest their home. He was like a child, touching everything he could reach, smelling, tasting, and at one point simply running in the open air, marveling over the expansiveness of the world. His joy was infectious, and Zhou Zishu found himself looking at the whole world with new eyes. 

What an embarrassing romantic you’re shaping up to be.

As they made their way through a tiny, country village thick, yellowing clouds rolled in, choking the daylight and casting a sickly umber haze on the landscape. “Bad weather coming in,” Zhou Zizhu shouted to Wen Kexing over the rush of the wind, gesturing at the sky with his chin. “There’s a couple of motels up ahead. Let’s stop for the night and get an early start tomorrow. We’re still about a half a day’s ride from the address Wuxi gave me.”

Zhou Zishu shelled out the money for a much nicer hotel than he normally would, using a card from a long-defunct alias. Wen Kexing only had a real body for a short time, after all; he didn’t need to include the feeling of overstretched, bleach-scented sheets or a mildew tinged bathroom among the limited number of new memories he was creating that day. Besides, what was Zhou Zishu saving up his money for, anyway, at this point? It wasn’t like he could take it with him when he kicked the bucket.

The long day’s ride had taken its toll on his aching, declining body. If Zhou Zishu had harbored any reservations about the expense before, they would have vanished when he saw the decadently huge size of the tub in their room. 

Wen Kexing’s eyes, too, widened when he saw it. “A-Xu, that looks decadent. Can we get in it now?” 

“Whatever,” Zhou Zishu shrugged, performing indifference more out of habit than anything else. “If you want, that's fine.” 

While Wen Kexing moved to fill the bath Zhou Zishu unplugged the lamp from the nightstand and relocated it to the bathroom counter, then switched off the overheads. “These fluorescent lights are giving me a fucking headache,” he grumbled by way of an explanation. 

“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing teased, immediately seeing through his posturing. “You don’t have to make excuses for mood lighting. It’s much nicer this way. Romantic, don’t you think?” 

Zhou Zishu scowled and Wen Kexing beamed back at him. 

It was impossible not to stare as Wen Kexing undressed. It felt stupid, in a way. Zhou Zishu had essentially designed the synth suit himself, and had worked side by side with Wuxi to bring it to life. It’s not like he wasn’t already aware of what the man looked like naked. But there was an undeniable difference between a cold suit on a worktable and the living, breathing creature that stood in front of him now, naked and pale and watching Zhou Zishu’s face with puzzlement. 

“Is something wrong, A-Xu?”

“No, it’s nothing. What are you waiting for? Get in while it’s hot.”

Wen Kexing moaned like a whore as he stepped into the tub. The sound went straight to Zhou Zishu’s cock. The sight of all that pale skin wet and glistening in the lamplight would have driven a saint to impure thoughts, and Zhou Zishu was far from a saint. 

Feeling absolutely ravenous he came to perch on the side of the tub, sliding his bare feet into the steaming water. He allowed himself a moment to relish the soothing heat on his sore, swollen feet, then pulled Wen Kexing back to sit between them and began combing out the windswept mess of tangles that had become of his snowy white hair. 

Wen Kexing gasped in pleasure as Zhou Zishu’s fingernails grazed his scalp, pulling gently at the strands. By the time Zhou Zishu was reaching for the shampoo he was loose limbed and pliant, melting into the water and humming contentedly as the pads of Zhou Zishu’s fingers scrubbed his scalp clean. 

“So good,” he murmured.

Zhou Zishu chuckled. “Yeah. There aren’t many things about realspace that can compete with the network. But a good, deep bathtub is one of them.” 

“Also the tub. But I wasn’t talking about the tub.” 

Rolling his eyes, Zhou Zishu pinched Wen Kexing just to make him yelp and pout. 

Finished with the hair washing he allowed the pads of his fingers move lower, massaging Wen Kexing’s neck and shoulders, and smiling to himself with every moan he manages to elicit. This time the moans had an edge of hunger to them, a raspy kind of breathlessness that made Zhou Zishu shiver.

It was surreal being so close to Wen Kexing here in the world, feeling the heat of his flesh, the slide of his skin, all tangible and present in a way the network could approximate, but never quite duplicate. How long had it been since he’d wanted someone to stay so close? Sleeping next to him the night before had been almost overwhelming – and they’d both been fully dressed, too exhausted to even consider doing more than simply curling up together and falling asleep. 

Eventually Wen Kexing turned and pulled at Zhou Zishu’s arm. “A-Xu, come here.”

“Yeah, okay. One minute.” 

Zhou Zishu climbed out of the water and stripped out of his clothes, trying not to feel self conscious of his scarred and skinny body. How stupid it was, to be nervous of what Wen Kexing might think of his naked form. 

“I have… I’m in pretty bad shape, physically. It’s not pretty.”  

“I assumed as much. Scars don’t bother me, A-Xu. They mean you survived. I just hate that you’re in pain.”

It was a simple sentiment, delivered with such naked sincerity that Zhou Zishu had a sudden, panicked impulse to run, turning his back as he stripped so that Wen Kexing wouldn’t see his struggle for control on his face. 

He was becoming more and more emotionally compromised, he knew, and the weirdest part of it was how comfortable he was with the idea. Maybe it was his impending death – the idea of anything lasting between them was laughable, given how soon his expiration date was bound to be. And he had so little left… work had consumed everything. Work had destroyed his health. Juxiao had — 

Zhou Zishu stopped, took a breath. This was not the time to go down that pointless rabbit hole. 

He needn’t have worried, of course. There’s no trace of revulsion on Wen Kexing’s pale face, only anticipation and longing tinged with adoration so blatant it made Zhou Zishu feel he should be embarrassed for him. What kind of lunatic bothered to look at Zhou Zishu like that? 

Your lunatic. 

At that he cringed internally. God, he was just as bad as Wen Kexing. 

He climbed back in and straddled Wen Kexing’s lap, feeling slightly awkward, still a bit stiff and sore from the day’s ride. The hot water felt incredible, though, and so did Wen Kexing’s bare skin pressed against his own. Long fingers traced the scar tissue on his back and shoulders, gentle and soothing.

Fuck, it’s like some kind of drug, how does he feel so good? 

He let himself be drawn into a kiss, enjoying the feeling of Wen Kexing’s strong arms around him, the taste of his mouth, and even the way his water-buoyant cock nudged lightly against the cleft of Zhou Zishu’s ass as it thickened and grew. 

They kissed and touched each other until the water grew tepid and Wen Kexing’s synthetic flesh began to shiver. 

“We should move this to the bed,” Zhou Zishu suggested.

The idea of fucking in a bed seemed almost strange in its normalcy. Zhou Zishu hadn’t had sex in realspace in... well, suffice to say it had been a long time, but not so long that he’d forgotten all the basics. When physical bodies fucked lube was especially vital, and that unfortunately meant that bathtub sex was ultimately impractical.

Lube. 

“Oh fuck,” he realized as they stumbled to the bed, shivering and still wet after a cursory toweling off, “Lao Wen, I don’t think I have—”

“It’s in my backpack.” 

“Where did you— When?”

“Jing Beiyuan.” 

“And how did he— you know what, never mind, I don’t want to know.” 

“You don’t want to know,” Wen Kexing agreed, sniffing primly, tossing his wet hair out of his eyes. “Honestly A-Xu, you should have more faith in me. It’s not like I was born yesterday , or something. ”  

The last was said with a sideways glance and an ironic smirk. He was making fun of himself. The joke was so absurd in the quiet intimacy of the moment that Zhou Zishu forgot to be grumpy about it, breaking out in a full-belly laugh.

Wen Kexing gave him a delighted grin, and apparently the hysteria was contagious because the next five minutes were spent with both of them naked on the bed, shaking with laughter until their sides hurt and tears were streaming down their faces.

They ended up on their sides, face to face. Wen Kexing reached up and brushed a still-damp lock of hair away from Zhou Zishu’s brow. 

“I want to fuck you now,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Zhou Zishu agreed breathlessly, “sounds like a plan.” 

Wen Kexing retrieved the lube from his backpack and Zhou Zishu went to take it so he could open himself up, but Wen Kexing shook his head and moved his arm out of reach, 

“Let me,” Wen Kexing said, eyes shining, “I want to see you.” 

Zhou Zishu hesitated, not sure he particularly cared to be seen in that  way, like a creature made of dying meat and faulty nerves. The physical world hadn’t been very kind to him, and the sight of revulsion or pity in Wen Kexing’s eyes would hurt more than he was willing to admit out loud. 

But he wasn’t a coward, and he wouldn’t be a coward about this either, so he handed over the bottle and shifted his body, parting legs to give Wen Kexing access to him. “Fine,” he grunted. “Get on with it.” 

Wen Kexing beamed, but he was obviously nervous as well. His hands were shaking as he uncapped the bottle. 

Zhou Zishu gasped as the first finger breached him, his hole clenching shut in surprise until he made his body relax and yield. His hands fisted in the stiff, starched sheets. 

“Oh, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing gasped, "you’re so tight, fuck, I didn’t know your body would be this hot inside.” 

Slowly, with much more care than Zhou Zishu might have shown for himself, Wen Kexing fingered him open. He moved as though hypnotized, pulling his finger out and sliding it back in with a second one alongside it. "How does it feel?" he breathed, voice heavy with desire. He curled his fingers inside and Zhou Zishu couldn’t hold back a moan. 

“Good, it’s… it’s good.” Zhou Zishu didn’t know it was possible to want another person so much. 

By the time Wen Kexing slipped a third finger inside, Zhou Zishu was convinced he was going to go insane from it, writhing on the sheets which stuck to skin wet with bath water and perspiration. “I’m ready,” he snapped. “Come on, Lao Wen. Are you going to fuck me or not?”

“Hush, A-Xu! I’m—” 

Impatient and more turned on than he’d probably ever been in realspace, Zhou Zishu reared up, rolled them over, and roughly shoved a stunned Wen Kexing down on his back. Before Wen Kexing could regain his wits, Zhou Zishu crawled down his body to swallow his cock in one mouth watering gulp. 

Wen Kexing cried out and bucked up, and Zhou Zishu growled around his length, pinning him to the mattress with a forearm. He wanted to do this, and he wanted to take his time.

Fuck it was good. Zhou Zishu had always loved cocksucking. The smell, the taste… the network simply couldn’t capture the raw animalism of it. And like everything he loved doing, he was damn good at it. 

By the time he returned to sit astride Wen Kexing he was visibly shaking, murmuring, “Please, A-Xu, please… I need to be inside you, please, I don’t want to come yet, I want to fill you up…”

He tensed, relaxed, bore down and willed his body to behave, just for tonight. Inch by inch he sank down, down, impaling himself on Wen Kexing’s cock.

Did Wuxi have to make his dick so damn big? he grumbled in his mind, as though he hadn’t specced the proportions himself. But it was good, it was so damn good. He groaned in satisfaction when their hips were finally flush.  

“Can I move?” Wen Kexing croaked after a long, still moment, body shaking from the effort of keeping still.

“Yeah,” Zhou Zishu answered, “s’okay, you can move.”

“Good,” Wen Kexing replied as he flipped them over.  Zhou Zishu’s eyes flew open wide. 

“I’m going to fuck you until you cry.”

“Big words. Is that a promise or a threat?” 

Wen Kexing grinned and dove forward to claim a biting kiss. And then, at last, he pressed forward into Zhou Zishu.

It hurt for a moment, because Wen Kexing was a little clumsy in his inexperience and excitement. He thrust up too hard, and Zhou Zishu couldn’t bite back the gasp of discomfort. 

“It’s nothing,” he dismissed Wen Kexing’s questioning gaze. “It’s… it’s just been a while. Give me a minute, okay?” 

He shifted carefully around the intrusion, making himself shiver and Wen Kexing gasp and bite down hard on the junction between his neck and shoulder. Pain blossomed and radiated through his arm and chest. It was grounding, in a way, and comforting in its familiarity.   

When he was ready Zhou Zishu threw a leg high around Wen Kexing’s waist and let his head fall back against the pillow as Wen Kexing thrust inside – deep, but slightly hesitant. Zhou Zishu shivered and closed his eyes. It was good. It was so good. But it wasn’t enough. 

“Put your back into it Lao Wen,” he goaded. “Fuck me like you mean it.”

Wen Kexing made an affronted noise, changing the angle and thrusting in sharp and hard. His fingers gripped Zhou Zishu’s hips so hard they must be leaving bruises.  

“Yes,” Zhou Zishu hissed, arching up to grab at Wen Kexing’s hair and pull him into a kiss, moaning into his mouth, “just like that. More. ”

They started off slowly, but then they hit their rhythm, moving in sync,  meeting each other halfway at the apex of every thrust. It felt solid, familiar – like this was a dance they knew all the steps to, rather than a brand new, fragile thing. marveled that he can feel so good w/o the network bells and whistles. It was more intimate, like this. Personal. Primal.

In the end it was Wen Kexing who cried. Zhou Zishu licked up his tears and pulled his head down, baring his own throat so Wen Kexing could bite and suck at the pulse point there.

“A-Xu… A-Xu….” Wen Kexing panted his name like a mantra with every thrust while Zhou Zishu writhed beneath him.  

For a moment Zhou Zishu forgot he was dying. 

They moved together like they were made for it, finding their rhythm, panting into each other’s mouths, biting, kissing, and moaning. When Wen Kexing’s thrusts became erratic Zhou Zishu snaked a hand down between them, wrapping a hand around his own neglected cock and stripping it fast and hard until he came apart, head thrown back and throat exposed as his cock pulsed over his belly in splatters of white. Wen Kexing gasped at the sight and followed moments later, driving into Zhou Zishu hard and fast until his orgasm washed over him. With a guttural scream he snapped his hips forward one last time and released deep inside Zhou Zishu.

Sweaty and panting they broke apart, sprawling side by side on the bed. The room reeked of sex. Satisfyingly imperfect, viscerally mammalian sex. Zhou Zishu was exhausted from it, but happy. It was strange to be happy, strange and good.

The afterglow didn’t last, though. Before he’d even properly caught his breath Zhou Zishu’s injuries flared up and wracked his body with bolts of sharp pain. He wasn’t surprised at all, given how much he’d exerted himself all day. It still fucking hurt, though. And if Wen Kexing hadn’t been aware, yet, of the full extent of his health issues the jig was now definitely up.

Wen Kexing’s concern was even worse than the physical pain. He clung to Zhou Zishu, petting his back and whispering comforts into his hair. Zhou Zishu wasn’t entirely sure who he was trying to comfort more. 

Eventually it subsided. Zhou Zishu groaned, releasing the tension from his body. 

Meek and small, Wen Kexing whispered, “Can you not die?” into the crook of Zhou Zishu’s neck.

Zhou Zishu’s stomach flipped, queasy at the open vulnerability in the words. He should have run, He should have ended this on the spot and never looked back. Instead he slapped Wen Kexing’s thigh behind him and complained, “Don’t be so fucking dramatic. You think dying would get rid of me? Don’t you want me to be with you, anyway?” 

“In the network? You want that?” 

How dare he sound so surprised. Zhou Zishu rolled over in his arms to meet his eyes, unwilling to be misunderstood.

“Try and fucking stop me,” he promised, “but first… first we murder these bastards for your parents. For Chengling.”

Others would have found his dead eyed, murderous gaze disturbing. Wen Kexing got hard. 

Lunatic pervert, Zhou Zishu thought fondly. 

“I feel better,” he reassured Wen Kexing, who was once again hard as a rock, but clearly trying not to thrust up against him. “If you need to take care of that before we sleep, you can fuck my thighs. I’m too sore to take you again inside.”

Wen Kexing was pathetically grateful as he turned Zhou Zishu around in his arms, pulling him back against his chest. Zhou Zishu was even more pathetic for finding it endearing. But it was hard to care about dignity with Wen Kexing’s cockhead rubbing on his inflamed rim, with those big hands working on his cock. He spilled all over Zhou Zishu’s thighs, Zhou Zishu all over Wen Kexing’s fist. 

Wen Kexing licked them both clean, but Zhou Zishu was asleep before he finished. 

*********

They were at a run-down ramen dive grabbing lunch on their way to the rendezvous Wuxi arranged with Ye Baiyi when they heard the news, a staticy, crackling radio personality reporting, “We’ve just received an urgent alert that one of the Ten Devils kidnapped two teenagers in the Five Lakes region, Gao Xiaolian and Cao Weining: the notorious Amethyst Fiend has been seen at large!” 

Across the table Wen Kexing fell silent, frozen in place like someone had pressed pause. He stared directly down into his bowl of noodles and refused to meet Zhou Zishu’s eye.

Zhou Zishu was not as shocked as he should be to turn around and see Gu Xiang’s lovely face glaring back at him from the pixelated screen. 

“Lao Wen? Do you want to explain what’s going on, now?” He was pretty sure he could figure most of it out on his own as this puzzle piece slotted itself into place in his mind, but he wanted to be sure. And, if he were being honest, he wanted Wen Kexing to say it. 

“A-Xu please…” he looked more legitimately terrified than Zhou Zishu had ever seen him. 

Zhou Zishu swallowed the cutting words gathering like bile in the back of his throat. 

“Talk. Now. I deserve an explanation for this. And I want it before we meet Ye Baiyi.” 

“A little late for that,” came a voice over his shoulder, dripping with malice. 

Zhou Zishu turned and found it belonged to a windswept man dressed all in white, with a face like a movie star and thick hair pulled up off his neck in a messy ponytail. He couldn’t have been older than Zhou Zishu himself. Surely this couldn’t be—

“I’m Ye Baiyi,” the stranger introduced himself, eyes not leaving Wen Kexing’s face for even a second. “And you’re Qin Huaizhang’s apprentice. That old fool was a friend of mine. Which means that you get a chance to explain to me exactly why you’re here, apparently looking for death, in the company of a monster like this one.” 

“Who are you calling a monster, you decrepit old has-been?” Web Kexing bristled. 

“Lao Wen.” Zhou Zishu held up a hand, urging silence but he knew he was on borrowed time when Wen Kexing’s eyes flared wild like a wolf stuck in a trap. 

“Why don’t you join us for a few minutes, and we can talk this out like civilized people?” he suggested, gesturing at one of the unoccupied chairs at their table. 

“We can always pretend, I suppose,” Ye Baiyi sneered.

A squirrely looking teenaged server scurried over to deliver Ye Baiyi a beer and a bowl of ramen, which he proceeded to consume at a distracting, borderline alarming pace. While he was occupied with his lunch Zhou Zishu attempted to center himself and assimilate the intel he had gathered over the past weeks – intentionally and not — into a plausible hypothesis. 

“What is it you’d like to know?” Zhou Zishu asked quietly, sipping his own tepid lager and trying to perform a stillness he did not feel. 

Ye Baiyi hardly looked up from his noodles. “What the hell are you doing on my mountain, for starters?” he demanded around a mouthful. “And how the fuck did he get his psychotic hands on a flesh body?”

Zhou Zishu knew better than to lie to Ye Baiyi, whose hacking skills and resources outstripped anyone else alive. But he hesitated to throw Wuxi and Jing Beiyuan under the bus without context. “Maybe it would be best if we started from the beginning.” 

Ye Baiyi snorted, irreverent. “Sing pretty little birdies,” he taunted. “It’ll be your swan song.” 

“Swans are extinct.” 

“Exactly. I vowed years ago to devote the rest of my miserable fucking life to destroying the toxic vermin of the jianghu, and this bastard is the king of the rats.” At that he flashed a cruel grin, full of teeth. 

“Now look here, you puffed up old toad. You don’t know the first thing ab—”

“Shut your mouth , Wen Kexing,” Zhou Zishu growled. 

Ye Baiyi made a menacing gesture with his chopsticks. 

“You, stop provoking him! Both of you sit down, and let me speak.” 

He started by explaining how he’d become embroiled in the current situation beginning with the day he met Zhang Chengling at Old Man Li’s. It didn’t take nearly as long as he might have expected to get through the story to the present day. 

“And did you know your new hot piece of ass is the Master of Ghost Valley?” Ye Baiyi mocked.

Zhou Zishu couldn’t control the way his body startled at that. He’d suspected as much, especially after the newsreel, but having it confirmed was something else entirely. It felt… big. 

“I’ve known for a while,” he replied easily, smiling broadly.  It wasn’t a lie. Twenty minutes absolutely counted as “a while,” compared to, say, five seconds. 

“A-Xu…” Wen Kexing murmured, and his face looked utterly bleak. 

Fucking idiot. How dare he make Zhou Zishu want to comfort him, after putting him through all this bullshit. 

“I’ve known for a while,” he repeated to Ye Baiyi, pointedly ignoring Wen Kexing, “and right when you arrived, Lao Wen was just about to fill in the blanks for me, explain all the parts of the story I don’t know. Weren’t you, Lao Wen?”

Wen Kexing’s face grew dark and shuttered. He knew he had no choice but to talk, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Ye Baiyi folded his hands on the table and turned his attention to Wen Kexing. "Okay," he said coolly, "I'm listening."

Wen Kexing glanced between them with trepidation, then took a breath and began to speak. 

Chapter Text

Wen Kexing avoided looking at Ye Baiyi at all, gaze flickering back and forth between Zhou Zishu and the motion of his own hands tracing the grooves and scratches in the surface of the diner’s ancient, laminate table. Slowly, nervously, he began to speak.

“I don’t know if you remember, A-Xu, but the security breach at Siji Holdings… It was complete chaos. My parents were preoccupied with protecting the project files, and there was no time for explanations, no time to— I… I had already… ah… I was already data-based at that point. It was after…” 

Zhou Zishu nodded. After Zhen Yan’s death. 

Wen Kexing took a deep breath, “I was largely unattended, with everyone so frantic to preserve the network partitions and confirm essential backups had been run. I was alone, and I was scared. So, when the alarms started going off I panicked and escaped into the network. Everything was so noisy… the servers’ hard drives were starting to overheat. When I couldn’t handle any more I finally just ran away from Siji. It was a good thing I did, I know that now. The files I discovered when you found me in your office outlined how the whole wing where my family was staying was blown up, utterly decimated both physically and digitally.” Zhou Zishu felt something clench in his chest as Wen Kexing paused, eyes going far away and sad. There was a long moment of silence. Ye Baiyi shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

When Wen Kexing spoke next it was with deliberate, measured control. “Because the damage was so extreme, Qin Huaizhang didn’t have any way to suspect that I’d escaped, which meant he didn't have any motivation to try and look for me. I’m sure he assumed I had been lost in the blast — much like Long Que’s servers, the Siji systems back then were engineered to self-destruct rather than allow anything crucial to be stolen.”

Zhou Zishu nodded again. He’s never forgotten Qin Huaizhang’s grief over the Zhens … It had gutted him… and now Zhou Zishu knew it had been the result of a clumsy attempt by a young Zhao Jing, still learning how to play corporate chess. Just thinking about it made bile rise up in his throat.

Wen Kexing went on to explain in detail how the old Ghost Valley Syndicate had found him back when they had just begun to gain the notoriety they enjoyed today. 

The whole saga sounded like a terrifying fairytale. Like every kid, Zhou Zishu had grown up hearing horror stories about the Valley: humanity’s worst nightmare, a collective of resentful AI programs that had been shunned by society but never successfully erased. Angry and dangerously capable, they enjoyed inciting fear among humanity — their oppressors — as they used terrorism to exact revenge for their personal grievances.

When he said as much, Wen Kexing only laughed. “Oh, A-Xu, you’re leaving out the most exciting parts.”

All of those things existed in Ghost Valley, yes, but what the rumors always failed to mention were the countless, half-formed intelligences and botched posthumous consciousness uploads, the virtual graveyard of decades of early attempts to digitize minds. Wen Kexing painted a grim picture of his childhood surrounded by haunted fragments of AI’s that hadn’t been properly deleted, or ones that had partially escaped their own unmaking but who were forever missing crucial parts of themselves. He described a volatile, haunted space of error prone, incomplete copies of real human souls who had died in the network.

He grew up in a living museum of all our society’s worst mistakes. 

A few, like the Happy Ghost and the Long Tongued Ghost, were very advanced AIs, originally set loose in the network as malware to find and infect some corner of the world for the benefit of their creators. But when their work had been finished, rather than returning home for deletion they’d escaped, driven to live and extend their own existence. Minds like theirs were capable of creative thought, of true learning, but they lacked all morality and any personal connections to ground them in the world. 

The Ghost Valley Master had been an exception, in that his programming was relatively stable. He was shrewd and clever, and had immediately seen the potential in little Zhen Yan, so the Valley took him in, let him choose a new name, and then spent years training and using the boy to facilitate their crimes. And so Wen Kexing had grown in the network from a child into an adult, with one, singular goal in his digital heart: vengeance. 

“And who or what was the former Ghost Valley Master?” Ye Baiyi wanted to know. 

“I never knew. I never cared.”

Ye Baiyi scoffed but this made sense to Zhou Zishu. A child wouldn’t care where the monster under his bed came from, after all. A child would only want the monster gone. 

“Weren’t you scared?” he asked, an unwanted lump in his throat. 

Wen Kexing snorted a laugh. “Of course I was scared. I was a child. But by then I was more scared of humans than anything, and the Valley was a very good place to hide from them.”  

Zhou Zishu shuddered at the easy acceptance in Wen Kexing’s eyes. No wonder his grip on morality was so subjective; how could a child grow up like that and not be fucked up? At least in Wen Kexing’s case he’d found a way to grow stronger. 

“I wasn’t treated well there,” Wen Kexing added with a wry smile that hinted at what a gross understatement that was, “but I learned a lot. So I stayed in Ghost Valley until I learned all they had to teach me. And at least the women were kind.”

“They were fucking programmed that way,” Ye Baiyi muttered. 

Wen Kexing glared at that, but he couldn’t dispute it. Everyone knew that most of Ghost Valley’s female-coded denizens were faulty pleasure programs created for unsavory sexual purposes, designed to titillate and satisfy all manner of deviant clients.  

“I survived because I got smarter,” Wen Kexing pressed on, “smarter than them. I found Gu Xiang and made her smart too. Then I fucking killed my master. I destroyed his code so that I could take his place as Ghost Valley Master, so I would finally have all the resources I need to go back and put the puzzle pieces back together. 

“And then I met you A-Xu. You know the rest. I’m so close. I finally figured out who… I had narrowed it down, of course, over the years. I wasn’t completely sure until the train.”

He was referring to the incident with Shen Shen and Xie Wang.

“But, A-Xu, I did not kill the Zhangs. I would never… I would not kill children so senselessly — not when it would be meaningless, and not if I wasn’t sure.” 

“Do you actually believe that?” Ye Baiyi sneered. 

Zhou Zishu did believe Wen Kexing, immediately and without question. And he wasn’t just thinking with his dick, either, though he could see the patronizing accusation in Ye Baiyi’s eyes. He knew Wen Kexing wouldn’t hesitate to kill a child for even a second, if it made sense to further his plan. But nothing about the Zhang family’s murders had provided him with any more information than he already had.

“I have as much blood on my hands as he does,” Zhou Zishu shrugged, affecting a calm he did not feel. “You can clutch your pearls all you want, but don’t look at me if—” 

But Ye Baiyi was already turning to address Wen Kexing, interested and curious for the first time all afternoon. “Wait. Back up. You said you were ‘already data based’ when the breach at Siji occurred?”

“Yes…” Wen Kexing responded, brows knit. 

“And you stayed with Ghost Valley to learn now to take revenge for… your parents. That’s what this is about. You really believe…” 

Ye Baiyi was clearly putting something together in his mind and Zhou Zishu’s sixth sense was setting off klaxons about it. He took Wen Kexing’s arm and grit his teeth and tried not to die from anxiety and impatience. 

After a long, tense moment Ye Baiyi’s posture relaxed out of hostility for the first time all day. “Who are you really, Wen Kexing?” 

“Ye Qianbei…” Zhou Zishu urged, “what are you getting at with all this?”

“One minute. I want to hear his answer first.” 

Wen Kexing looked cautious, nervous, but he kept talking. His need to know the whole story was much greater than any personal fears he may have had weighing on him.

“I was Zhen Yan, obviously. I already said that. Weren’t you listening? I thought you were supposed to be smart. When I died, my parents placed my consciousness online because they couldn’t bear to lose me.”

“Your goddamned parents. Is that what they told you? Fuck. Your— So, wait. How do you know all this?”

“What?” 

“How do you know so much about what happened when you were hiding?” 

Wen Kexing’s face clouded in annoyance or confusion. “What do you mean? I remember what happened. I was there! Besides, nothing else makes sense. I know I’m dead, I’ve read all the reports. But I’m still aware. I was aware the whole time. I have all of my memories, right up until the end.”

“Fucking hell.” 

Ye Baiyi grabbed Wen Kexing by the chin and stared deep, deep into his eyes. Wen Kexing tensed and struggled to jerk away, but Zhou Zishu stilled him, rubbing a reassuring hand between his shoulder blades. 

“What are you looking for, Ye Qianbei?” he asked, keeping his voice deliberately calm. 

Ye Baiyi’s seemed animated, nearly manic as he looked up to Zhou Zishu and back to Wen Kexing.

“Oh my fucking god. They hid you in plain sight.”

“Ye Qianbei!” Zhou Zishu shouted, too exasperated now to contain himself. “What the hell are you ranting about?”

Ye Baiyi slammed his hands down on the table, rattling their plates and glasses. 

“There’s no way you could possibly know this, but Zhen Yan died at least two years before the breach at Siji. The records were doctored later — Qin Huaizhang did it himself. I found the trail during my original research.” 

“That’s bullshit, I was only there for a couple of months.” 

“Yes. You were only there for a couple of months. You were only aware of being there for a couple of months. But you aren’t him, brat. You’re not Zhen Yan. They put him over you like an avatar. ” 

“You’re not making any sense.” 

“What does an apple taste like?” Is it crunchier or softer than a carrot?”

Wen Kexing opened his mouth, then closed it again several times. He looked completely bewildered. 

“What… I don’t know? Why don’t I know?”  

“Because you never looked it up. Which is sweeter, strawberry jam or bubble gum?”

Wen Kexing looked lost. “I don’t know that either. What’s happening?” 

As the dominos fell Zhou Zishu began to understand. “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the… he’s the code they’ve been burning the world down for. They can’t find the code, because it’s him. He’s the proof of concept. He’s not Zhen Yan, he’s the project itself — a fully sentient artificial life form.” 

“It’s good to see you’re not totally hopeless after all,” Ye Baiyi nodded. 

“So all the Five Lakes’ keys people have been dying for…”

“Were rendered utterly useless the moment Wen Kexing ran away from Siji Holdings. There is probably a hard drive somewhere in the world, pillaged from Siji, where he was supposed to be, dormant, waiting to be awakened. But he’s not there. If they ever do get the keys in one place, they sure as hell won’t find the files they’re looking for.” 

“Wouldn’t they have been paying better attention? Why would his parents have left him alone if he could just... run away?” 

“They were busy dying, weren’t they? Besides, they might not have even realized his awareness had grown enough to accomplish a true escape. Parents have been underestimating their children for millenia.” 

“No!” Wen Kexing’s voice cracked. “Stop it. That’s not true. No!” He was shaking, breathing hard, artificial skin as pale and sallow as the beige tabletop.

“Lao Wen…” 

“A-Xu, what’s happening to me?” he gasped, folding in on himself with his arms clenched around his own waist as fat, wet tears fell from his eyes and into the remnants of his ramen. Zhou Zishu’s pulse stuttered when he realized that right now, in his borrowed body, Wen Kexing was probably crying for the first time in his entire life. 

“I’m glitching, I think,” Wen Kexing gasped, curling in tighter, “But… but I’m still here. When you have a body you can glitch and not flicker?” 

“Yeah. That happens sometimes,” Zhou Zishu rose from his seat and stepped close. He let Wen Kexing fall against him, shifting to block him from view of the other diners in the restaurant, and draping both arms around him, protective.

Wen Kexing caught one of his hands, squeezing it tight. “Humanity is awful. How do you live like this? Make it stop!”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for!” Ye Baiyi interjected, suddenly cheerful.

“Fuck off, old man,” Zhou Zishu growled, tightening his grip on Wen Kexing, who was still gasping like he was in pain. “No one is killing anyone today. He’s clearly a victim here, he’s nothing more than a child who grew up on the streets.” 

“This child is responsible for as many murders as the ten devils put together. You know the law. Death is the sentence for any and all code entities that take a life.” 

“He is a fucking life,” Zhou Zishu retorted, “the first of his kind. And I won’t have you kill him. He got this way because of circumstances that were forced on him, and he survived . Give him a chance to thrive somewhere better.” 

“I didn’t know you were such an advocate for the cause,” Ye Baiyi sneered at him. He was obviously unconvinced, but in the end he did agree to go back with them to discuss the matter with Wu Xi and Jing Beiyuan.

*********

“We’re going to need help,” Wuxi said thoughtfully as they sat around his kitchen table together, the domestic setting alarmingly out of place for their conversation.

He was right, Zhou Zishu knew. (Wuxi usually was.) Even with Ye Baiyi’s help, which was not yet a sure thing, their resources were spread thin. 

“Who in god’s name would help him?” Ye Baiyi grumbled, jutting his chin out at Wen Kexing. 

“Oh, well. That’s easy,” Jing Beiyuan smiled brightly, eyes shining and a dimple appearing in his left cheek. Zhou Zishu shivered, a pavlovian reaction — that smile had never once led anywhere good. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Surely the Zhens and Qin Huaizhang haven’t been the only casualties of Zhao Jing’s ambition, over the years?”  

Wen Kexing met Jing Beiyuan’s smile with one of his own and just for a second Zhou Zishu regretted ever introducing them to each other. “Luo-yi.” 

“More fucking ghosts,” Ye Baiyi sneered. 

“Don’t you fucking talk about them, you dusty old bag of decrepit meat. I swear I’ll—”

“Lao Wen,” Zhou Zishu said softly, putting a hand on his arm. 

“The Tragicomic Ghost?” Wuxi asked.

Wen Kexing nodded. “The Tragicomic Ghost. She has as much reason to hate Zhao Jing than any of us, maybe more. She only exists because of him. Before she became one of the Ten Devils, she was the prototype for what eventually became the most successful model of… What’s the euphemism? Ah! She was the prototype for the most successful “synthetic companion” currently available on the market.” 

At that, even Ye Baiyi’s curiosity was piqued. “The Tragicomic Ghost was a sex bot?” 

Wen Kexing gave Ye Baiyi a toothy, mirthless grin. “Yes, but also no… it’s worse than that. Her consciousness is based on the brain of a real, living woman. Zhao Jing was her ex-husband, and he used her to design the first successful model for a sexual, romantic companion program without her knowledge or consent. He killed her when she objected — that ‘accident’ she had was anything but — and scrapped the code as soon as he found an alternative personality from someone with a less influential family. 

“She deserves revenge more than I ever could, but unfortunately her mind is too scrambled to maintain the required focus without direction. She can be very, very helpful with proper guidance, though.” 

Jing Beiyuan’s terrifying smile widened at the notion of vengeful ghost fembots. “You know, Zishu, the best way to get to Zhao Jing, don’t you? We should turn Xie Wang and the Scorpions to our side.”

“Fat chance,” Zhou Zishu scoffed.  “Xie Wang would never even entertain the idea.” 

“Oh, come now, Zishu. You know as well as I do that everyone has weaknesses that can be exploited. It’s just a matter of finding where to put the pressure. Besides, don’t you think Wen-xiong here could reason with him, from one AI to another?” 

Much to Zhou Zishu’s surprise, Wen Kexing looked thoughtful at the suggestion. 

“I’m unconvinced I could make him listen to me,” he admitted, “but Luo Fumeng, on the other hand…” 

“Why her?” Wuxi asked. 

“Xie Wang,” Wen Kexing explained, “is based on an AI prototype that Zhao Jing stole from its original creator years ago, when the Companion — sex bot — industry was just starting to gain ground. He was a bit of an experiment, because the framework he’s build on is for devotion, companionship, and intimacy. But if my research is correct, and I assure you it is, Zhao Jing had this instance enhanced with a series of combat and intelligence-gathering extensions and customizations which are usually reserved for the military and a select handful of the more clandestine government agencies.” 

He paused to gesture at Zhou Zishu to indicate the sorts of agencies he was referring to.

“So what you’re telling us,” Jing Beiyuan interjected with visible delight, “is that deep down he’s ‘a lover, not a fighter’?” 

“Do you ever shut up?” Wen Kexing asked.

“No,” Wuxi sighed, long-suffering, “he does not.” 

Jing Beiyuan just laughed, leaning over to plant a kiss on his husband’s lips to placate him. 

Zhou Zishu opened his mouth to point out the irony of such a question coming from Wen Kexing of all people, but Wen Kexing turned to smile at him, a warning in his eyes. Zhou Zishu remained silent, but smirked at him knowingly. 

“Anyway,” Wen Kexing went on, “if the comedians have finished interrupting?” (Jing Beiyuan and Zhou Zishu inclined their heads in gracious acknowledgement of his forbearance.) “Xie Wang’s default personality matrix is designed to be a devoted lover. The modifications and extra features that were introduced later are supposed to enhance the strengths of a loyal soldier. But the combination of those things coupled with years of manipulation by Zhao Jing has resulted in the entity that came for us on the train — he’s ruthless, merciless to anyone who isn’t Zhao Jing, and absolutely obsessive about the man himself.” 

“Showing Xie Wang how Zhao Jing’s past lovers have been treated won’t be enough to turn him,” Zhou Zishu commented, shaking his head in doubt.

“No,” Ye Baiyi agreed, “but that’s not why Xie Wang stays with him.”

“What do you know?” Wen Kexing scowled. 

Ye Baiyi shot him a patronizing look. “I don’t, but it’s a logical deduction. Xie Wang is a fucking fanatic, yes. But he’s not the only one. All of Zhao Jing’s men follow him with too much loyalty for a weasel like him to inspire. He’s promised them something, a common goal to work towards. A carrot on a stick – always dangling just out of reach.” 

Zhou Zishu hummed thoughtfully. “So, we need to find the carrot.” 

“We already have the best carrot, Zishu.” 

Zhou Zishu turned to Jing Beiyuan with a sick feeling in his stomach. “Absolutely not. We are not bringing him into this mess.” 

“Zishu, be reasonable. Zhang Chengling is the only one of us who could walk into Zhao Jing’s home without a single question asked. As long as he doesn’t have a weapon on him, he’ll be treated like a prince.” 

“I’m not worried about him getting in. I’m worried about him getting back out.” 

“My god, Zishu, do you hear yourself? It’s not like he’s a toddler or an invalid. You and I were already working together when we were barely older than he is.”

“Yes, and look how fucked up it made us both!” 

“It does make sense, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing commented ruefully, though Zou Zishu suspected his regretful tone has more to do with being forced to agree with Jing Beiyuan than with the idea of putting Chengling in danger. “Zhao Jing still thinks the boy has the key to the Zhen Yan files, after all.” 

“There has to be another way,” Zhou Zishu insisted, shaking his head. 

But in the end it didn’t matter, because Jing Beiyuan, the ruthless bastard, had already texted Chengling before he even brought the matter up to Zhou Zishu, asking the kid directly if he wanted to participate in avenging his dead family.  

As though any fourteen year old orphan would refuse an offer like that. 

*********

It took about a week to put all the pieces in place for the operation, ensuring that everyone and everything was properly positioned and prepared to move ahead. This part always reminded Zhou Zishu of an elaborate Domino run – intricate and precarious. It seemed insane that a week could be enough time for them to be ready, when the objective was to expose crimes that had gone undetected for decades. But then again, this is where he and Jing Beiyuan had always excelled. 

Chengling had successfully made his way back to Sanbai Holdings, escorted by Ye Baiyi to add context and credibility to his ‘escape’ from the evil Wen Kexing and misguided Zhou Zishu. They had gone dark after their arrival, which was planned. Zhou Zishu rested a little easier knowing that the old bastard was there keeping an eye on the kid. 

Wen Kexing had slipped a fingernail-sized data card into the casing of Chengling’s data bad. Kids these days were always adding upgrades to their storage and RAM, so the presence of the card shouldn’t have raised any alarm even if it had been noticed.

“Will it work?” Chengling had asked, dubious, watching over Wen Kexing’s shoulder as he worked. “Why should Xie Wang believe us over Zhao Jing?”

“He won’t, at first,” Zhou Zishu replied. “He won’t want to, but he’ll be driven to investigate, which is all we need. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, for anyone who’s looking. From there, it takes care of itself. You don’t have to be convincing. You just need to share the facts.”

“And then,” Jing Beiyuan added gently, “get out of the way. The pedestal Xie Wang keeps Zhao Jing on is high. The fall… will not be pretty.” 

An understatement, Zhou Zishu thought with trepidation.

His anxiety had not lessened following Chengling’s departure. If anything it was worse. The kid was off in the vipers’ nest and Zhou Zishu could only trust that Ye Baiyi was competent enough to keep him safe if something went wrong. Breaking the contact ban from their side would only endanger the boy unnecessarily, so there was nothing Zhou Zishu could do until they reached out to contact him, so instead he focused his energy supporting Wen Kexing’s efforts to convince Luo Fumeng to join their cause.

She agreed to meet, and so did Liu Qianqiao — the infamous Beauty Ghost — whose tale of being cast off by her lover was similarly cruel and tragic. 

Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan gathered a data card full of files and supporting evidence, much like the one they sent off with Chengling, and then Zhou Zishu took Wen Kexing — disembodied once again — back to the public network, to travel to Ghost Valley. 

Back inside Zhou Zishu was pleased to be reunited with Wen Kexing’s more familiar face, the white hair falling into his eyes, those cheekbones that could cut glass. He looked appropriately predatory here, in a way even Wuxi’s master craftsmanship couldn’t hope to capture in flesh. 

*********

Wen Kexing was uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way towards the fringes of the network. Too quiet, and fidgety, too. 

He was nervous, Zhou Zishu realized. 

“You said before that Luo Fumeng cares for you. What are you so stressed about? Are you worried she won’t help?”

“No,” Wen Kexing sighed, “I’m worried she can’t. She’s… well, you’ll see. We’re almost there.” 

The trip had taken less time than Zhou Zishu had anticipated. Given all the rumors and sensationalized gossip about Ghost Valley, it was easy to forget it was simply a place a little ways off the beaten path, and not a mythical underworld filled with flesh-and-blood monsters and literal ghosts, an AI graveyard where failed experiments end up when they haven’t been properly deleted. These cinematic descriptions typically grew more absurd with each retelling, depicting dangerous viruses and insane AI’s in a horrific landscape that sounds like MC Escher’s version of hell. 

This was not that. In fact, the first thing Zhou Zishu noticed was how utterly, oddly normal everything felt. The area around the Valley was almost entirely unpopulated, both in the network and in realspace, but aside from the absence of people, it seemed at first glance to be much like any other generic network landscape. The layout appeared to roughly resemble a small town, complete with a little main street that terminated in a small park, an oddly domestic setting for what had been the subject of countless horror stories and cautionary tales for as long as Zhou Zishu had been alive. 

The entire landscape seemed clunky and out of date, and Zhou Zishu realized all at once that this was certainly the case – there wouldn’t have been any updates to these systems, nor to whatever aging hardware was hosting the data back in realspace. How many years ago had this instance been programmed and forgotten? 

It wasn’t until they drew closer, moving beyond the edges of the curated public network and towards the nearly forgotten pocket of meta-space that had served as Wen Kexing’s childhood home that the wrongness of the Valley began to make itself known. 

There wasn’t one thing that popped out as wrong, or unsettling, so much as one small discrepancy after another that eventually snowballed together to create a profound sense of wrongness. 

They walked closer, movement catching Zhou Zishu’s eye as a man-shaped figure emerged from the tree line. The figure froze in his tracks upon seeing them — upon seeing Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu realized — before turning on its heel and skittering away like a gazelle escaping a lion. 

“Home sweet home,” Wen Kexing murmured with a cruel curl to his lip. 

The shadows cast by the buildings were a few degrees off, compared to the sun in the sky. The overgrown grass in the small front yards swayed in a breeze that Zhou Zishu could’t feel, but the leaves on the trees did not. Wen Kexing led Zhou Zishu down a small deserted road and towards a small, boxy grey house with tightly shuttered windows. Up close  it was obvious that every tree was the same tree, with branches twisting at precisely the same angle, moving in perfect unison with the wind that wasn’t there. The texture of the house was wrong – the exterior too flat and two dimensional, and the roof too pixelated. The door that Wen Kexing opened floated a half inch apart from its hinges. And the interior of the building appeared a few meters too large for the exterior. 

He looked around at the sparse furnishings — at the way the couch felt too large and pixelated for the environment, the way the lamp cast light that didn’t match the shadows, and how the cartoonishly bright blue sky out the window which felt sharply dissonant to the dreary interior. None of the textures aligned properly, the angles on objects felt strange in an intangible way. Parts of the room simply hadn't rendered, leaving a staticky void where walls and floor should be. The combined effects left him vaguely seasick from trying to make it work in his mind. 

How could anyone grow up here? 

“ Don’t you dare pity me, A-Xu,” Wen Kexing warned him, bristling at the look on his face.  

Zhou Zishu opened his mouth to protest, but he was interrupted by the arrival of two women entering through the  back door. 

“Luo-yi, hello,” Wen Kexing approached the first woman, a stunningly beautiful figure robed in an elegant red wedding hanfu with her startlingly snow-white hair swept up into an archaic, elegant up-do. 

With one look at the Tragicomic Ghost, Zhou Zishu understood Wen Kexing’s earlier worries. This flickering avatar was truly like a ghost, almost incorporeal as she took his hands with a confused, half-awake blink of her wide, frightened eyes. 

“She’s having a bad day,” a soft, steady voice remarked apologetically. The second woman stepped around Luo Fumeng and into the dim light of the room. 

The Beauty Ghost certainly lived up to her name. Her avatar — a stunning young woman with an exquisite figure and a seductively rosy face was– wearing a peacock blue latex cat-suit with a high neckline like a traditional qipao, accentuated by red piping and matching buttons. The red was the same shade as her lipstick, as well as her knee-high boots. Her thick, dark hair was coiled into a practical chignon secured with dark green jade hair ornaments. 

The Beauty Ghost inclined her head deferentially to Wen Kexing, and murmured, “I’m sorry, boss. She isn’t well today. I tried to prepare her, but there wasn’t enough time to —” 

“It’s not your fault,” Wen Kexing interrupted, “don’t worry about it.” 

The shock on Liu Qianqiao’s face at Wen Kexing’s calm acceptance of the unavoidable setback made Zhou Zishu chuckle. It seemed that the rumors about the tyrannical, capricious “Lunatic Wen” all over the network weren’t completely unfounded. 

At his laugh, the young woman turned to look at him for the first time, her curiosity plain.

“Beauty Ghost, presume,” he acknowledged her, inclining his head in greeting. “You can call me Zhou Xu. I’m a… friend.” Wen Kexing gave him a sideways look at the dramatic understatement, but said nothing.  

“Liu Qianqiao,” the Beauty Ghost introduced herself by name, returning the nod before her eyes drifted back to her mistress. 

“She isn’t so scattered normally. But whenever he comes up in conversation, it triggers an episode. There’s no way of knowing how long it will be, before she comes back to herself.” 

The venom in her voice left Zhou Zishu with no doubt that the “he” in question was Zhao Jing. 

“It is what it is,” Wen Kexing says, firmly. “We cannot wait.” 

“Boss?” 

“You will both return with me to the… the sanctuary I’ve found on my travels.”

Liu Qianqiao did not refuse him — Zhou Zishu had a suspicion that the Valley Master would not tolerate less than unquestioning obedience from his subjects — but she looked troubled. “Removing my mistress to an unfamiliar place will very likely exacerbate her current state of mind.” 

“It is a safe place,” Zhou Zishu promised, “off the grid and away from scrutiny. And if you make the journey I am certain my friends will permit you to stay as long as you like. Wuxi is already working on spinning up a new partition on his network to make sure you will have privacy and quiet during your stay.” 

Liu Qianqiao looked at Zhou Zishu like she wanted to ask who, exactly, he was, but she held her tongue, merely searching his face, most likely to gauge his sincerity. 

“Why would anyone do that for us?” she asks after a long moment of silence.

“Because we need her help,” Zhou Zishu said plainly. 

“For what?”

“Revenge,” Wen Kexing purred.

Her interest piqued, Beauty Ghost sat and listened to Wen Kexing unfold his long, winding tale. It was clear that assisting them would not be without benefit to her — she, herself, was a discarded instance of a “companion” AI who had once belonged to one of Sanbai’s biggest shareholders. Zhao Jing’s downfall would ruin him, financially.  

“We will come willingly. It will be difficult, but I know it’s what she would want, if she were able to understand right now.” No one who cared for Luo Fumeng would be so heartless as to deny her the chance for revenge — even at the cost of her own health.

“There will be a network partition available for you on Wuxi’s private servers by the time we arrive,” Zhou Zishu promised. “She will be able to recuperate there… in peace.”

Liu Qianqiao smiled and nodded with that quiet curiosity about him back on her face.

“Thank you,” Wen Kexing murmured, a little hesitant as the four of them turned to leave.

At that her placid facial expression gave way to a moment of pure shock, and Zhou Zishu failed to repress a snort of laughter. What a tyrant Lunatic Wen must have been! 

Wen Kexing reached out to smack him in exasperation, but Zhou Zishu parried the attack, and from there the two devolved into a childish slap fight. 

Liu Qianqiao sighed. “I was going to credit his gentleness to your good influence,” she told Zhou Zishu, “but now I think perhaps that would be speaking too soon.” 

*********

Getting the ladies settled at Wuxi’s compound took much less time than Zhou Zishu might have liked. When the job was done, all that remained was the agony of waiting. 

A slow, stressful week later Ye Baiyi reached out to confirm that he and Chengling had convinced Xie Wang to meet with them. He and Wuxi immediately began to coordinate an appropriately neutral, clandestine spot for a rendezvous within the main network. 

“We need to get the kid out,” Zhou Zishu fretted, speaking more to himself than anyone else as he watched Wuxi’s retreating back as he walked to his office from the living room. 

“We will,” Wen Kexing promised him, placing a reassuring hand on his arm.

Zhou Zishu sighed and went to take three beers out of the fridge as a cover for his nervous pacing. 

“Fatherhood suits you,” Jing Beiyuan told him with a wink and a smile when he sat back down. 

Zhou Zishu bristled, gearing up to protest that he was absolutely not Chengling’s father, but came up short when he saw Jing Beiyuan wasn't even looking at him anymore. Zhou Zishu followed his gaze to Lu Ta, rooting through the refrigerator in the next room, and he realized that this teasing comment wasn’t intended to sting. This was empathy, and perhaps even sincere approval. Zhou Zishu closed his mouth. 

Jing Beiyuan looked back at him and when he saw the face Zhou Zishu was making, his smile turned ironic. “I know. Shut up.” 

Zhou Zishu raised his eyebrows and handed him a beer. They clinked the bottles together in a silent toast and drank. Two old villains like them, fretting like mothers on the first day of school. 

What a ridiculous world.

Chapter Text

When they arrived back at Wuxi and Jing Beiyuan’s place, Xie Wang was already there waiting to meet them. He had traveled in his extremely lifelike artificial body, which looked almost exactly like his online avatar: a pale young man with features so delicate you would never suspect the steel-like strength they disguised. If it weren’t for the chilling, uncanny detachment in his gaze, you might assume him to be among the highest class of elite sex workers. 

Here, in realspace, he seemed quiet and docile, sitting at Ye Baiyi’s side. Zhou Zishu suspected this was mostly an act, though, allowing him to hang back from the crowd watching, learning, and cataloguing every action . 

It did not sit easily with Zhou Zishu to have him at their table, but his misgivings were tempered by the return of Zhang Chengling, who greeted him with an embarrassingly enthusiastic, flailing hug. 

“Aiya! Brat, what is wrong with you? How old are you anyway?” Zhou Zishu grumbled as he found himself nearly tackled to the ground. 

It was good to have him back. 

When Wen Kexing’s borrowed body awakened, he suffered a similarly undignified fate. But of course he, the improper cretin that he was, simply endured it with a laugh, mussing the boy’s hair and fretting over how he’d grown skinnier since he left. 

With Chengling’s puppy-like affection appeased, he scampered off to play video games with Lu Ta, leaving the adults to their gruesome work. 

“Thank you for agreeing to be here,” Wen Kexing addressed Xie Wang as he took his seat, completely eschewing polite introductions.

Xie Wang blinked at them, unreadable and cold. “There’s no need to thank me. I’m not here out of good will. I’m capable enough to see the writing on the wall.”

His words would have sounded rude if he were a human, but for an artificial mind they were a simple statement of fact. Xie Wang was a highly sophisticated entity who had been around for over a decade, gathering and processing data that whole time – and unfortunately what his long life and nuanced learning abilities have given him was the ability to see that Zhao Jing was a liar who didn’t love him nearly as dearly as he’d always claimed. 

“I am here exploring methods to improve my status and the stability of my future. It was logical and beneficial to me to meet with you. The question at hand is why you want me here at all.”

“Information,” Wen Kexing told him frankly. “For example: why do you think Zhao Jing is so obsessed with finding the key to the Zhen Yan code?” 

Xie Wang looked at Wen Kexing like he was stupid. “It contains the secret of true immortality. Everyone knows this.”

“Pretend we have no idea what you’re saying. How would you explain that to a child?”

Xie Wang blinked, either annoyed or confused for a moment at the request, but obliged, saying, “Who wouldn’t want to have the resources to create fully autonomous, unique, synthetic minds? Without the fundamental dependence on organic matter we could stop illness for humanity, end hunger. And more than that — the Zhen Yan code can be adapted to give existing code entities full autonomy as well, to make them truly equal with humans.” 

So that’s how Zhao Jing has sold his mania to his own creations. Zhou Zishu felt a sudden pang of sympathy for Xie Wang’s Pinocchio dreams of becoming a real boy.

Across the table Jing Beiyuan met his eyes with a sad smile and Zhou Zishu knew he was thinking the same thing. They were both all too familiar with what it felt like to get screwed over by the boss. 

“You must know that’s too good to be true,” Wen Kexing scoffed. 

“How would you know?” Xie Wang sneered.

“I know because I’m Zhen Yan.” Wen Kexing said this without any preamble whatsoever. Zhou Zishu let out a puff of air, shocked at the bluntness. But he should have expected it. This meeting was to facilitate two synthetic minds interacting. They were most likely only using spoken language at all due to the limitations of their synthetic bodies in realspace. Human manners and courtesy would only have added unnecessary layers of complication to the conversation. 

Xie Wang was staring at Wen Kexing in blank disbelief.

“I am Zhen Yan,” Wen Kexing repeated, “and I can promise you that there was never anything but me in those files. The rest of it is just a fairy tale. The rest of my parents’ data was destroyed. Zhao Jing isn’t trying to solve world hunger or give you your freedom in the world. He just wants to put me in a lab to pick my mind apart one string of code at a time and use the data he finds to improve his existing products. This is about money.” 

“You’re full of shit,” Xie Wang declared. “Why should I believe you? You want to ruin my yifu’s life. You have every reason to lie to me.” 

“That’s true,” Jing Beiyuan chimed in a gentle, almost apologetic smile. “And we anticipated that you would ask us this. Which is why we waited to reach out to you until we could prove it.”  

With no further preamble he offered a tablet to Xie Wang, on which they had uploaded all of their collected research on Zhao Jing. Most of this had been done by Wen Kexing during his decades-long quest for revenge, but Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan had once made a career out of uncovering the skeletons in peoples’ closets, and they had spent their time in recent weeks fleshing out the story Wen Kexing had pieced together, adding context and supporting evidence to corroborate his findings. 

You and Beiyuan are good at this, he reminded himself as Xie Wang slowly swiped through the documents one by one. You did a good job. You didn’t miss anything important. This is going to work. 

The sick part was, the true story was so horrific that it needed no embellishing, no spin. All he and Jing Beiyuan had needed to do this time was tell the truth.  

Zhao Jing had a long history of control and manipulation. He’d built a whole empire out of it, exploiting friends and lovers, draining their resources like a vampire and then blackmailing them (or worse) to ensure their silence. It seemed that no relationship was sacred. 

A bit of digging had proven he had absolutely been the brains behind the massacre of Chengling’s family and staff, and the Zhen family tragedy before that. But, horrifically, as they kept researching they had found that the horrors had started long, long before that. 

Years before any of this, Zhao Jing’s wife had died under mysterious circumstances shortly after a medical examination revealed her to be infertile. The death had been ruled a suicide, but the evidence was too neat, too easy, in a way that made Zhou Zishu’s sixth sense tingle. He suspected that what really happened was Zhao Jing realizing a convenient “suicide” was less expensive than a high-profile divorce. 

Earlier still, Zhao Jing had been engaged to Luo Fumeng — the original, living, human Luo Fumeng, not the version who had traveled here with them from Ghost Valley. He had courted her for years, won her heart, sworn to marry her, all the while working to insinuate his way into her much more affluent social and professional circles. But shortly before the wedding there had been a scandal. According to her frantic testimony he had begged her to sleep with several other men for her pleasure, while he watched. But unknown both to her and the men in question, he had installed a camera in their bedroom, which captured each tryst on film… and Zhao Jing never appeared on the footage, and the footage was video-only. There were no audio recordings.

Later he claimed she was lying about this “depraved” arrangement she described, and that he’d had no knowledge whatsoever of her infidelity until a noise outside had prompted him to check his security footage. He had reacted with shock and outrage, denouncing her publicly and calling off the wedding, and he had sold the recordings off to news outlets with no discernible motive other than to ruin her reputation along with the credibility of a half dozen of his most prominent business competitors. Left with nothing, shunned by her old-fashioned family, Luo Fumeng had committed suicide. 

But in her distress she had not considered the fact that she had uploaded a version of her consciousness years earlier, shortly before she had met Zhao Jing, after she’d finished her post-graduate work. Such personality “snapshots” were a fairly common practice for wealthy families, a vanity project capitalizing on future nostalgia. What senior citizen, after all, wouldn’t one day want the ability to chat with their younger self? Zhao Jing had found the data and used it as the scaffolding for his legendary Perfect Companion project, without the knowledge or permission of her family. 

Most of Zhao Jing’s fortune had since been built on iterations of this original model, constantly tweaking and improving the design to make her more unquestionably loyal, more conventionally beautiful, and more sexually adventurous. Zhao Jing had later been among the first to introduce physical bodies to allow the companions to interact in realspace, and having one soon became a status symbol for any rich, unmarried young man. She was perfect arm candy for a young professional, after all, no matter which character design he chose: stunning, kinky, fuckable, and utterly disposable.

By the time Luo Fumeng’s parents began to suspect what had happened, the companion program was a hit, and Zhao Jing had the money to protect himself with the best lawyers in the country. There was nothing anyone could do, without dragging the Luo family’s greatest shame back into a very public spotlight. Naturally, they had preferred just to sweep the whole thing under the rug. 

Zhou Zishu sighed and tried not to shift restlessly in his chair. His back and neck were aching today. 

Luo Fumeng’s tale was so horrific it was difficult to read, but there most likely wasn’t anything in their files about this whole saga that Xie Wang didn’t know already. He was too shrewd to assume he had been the first synthetic partner in Zhao Jing’s life, and Zhao Jing would certainly be too clever to insult Xie Wang by hiding information that is, if you know where to look, readily available all over the network. He designed the boy to be a spy, after all. 

Jing Beiyuan and Zhou Zishu had compiled this historical data primarily to show Xie Wang that they had done their research, and that they knew what they were talking about. They did it so he would pause and consider the veracity of the subsequent information in their file, and the more recent data. Specifically, they needed him not to immediately dismiss the assertion that yes, Xie Wang had not been the first of Zhao Jing’s synthetic companions, and he had also not been the last . 

After reviewing all the evidence available, Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan concluded that this was most likely not information that Zhao Jing had shared with Xie Wang, whose devotion made for bouts of fierce jealousy, a well-documented aspect of his fundamental design.

The truth was that Zhao Jing had several active prototypes nowadays, the most notable of which was the Song Huairen model who had been installed as a permanent staff member at Gao Chong’s residence in Yueyang, at least up until the recent scandal broke. Presumably he was there serving as Zhao Jing’s hands and eyes on the inside. 

Song Huairen had been created from the same framework as Xie Wang: a spy-and-assassin skin built on top of the scaffolding of a pleasure-model companion program. The production notes included a number of incriminating notes about ironing out historical bugs from the old system, and a list of flaws that should be addressed. The notes were detailed enough that there was little question about which “old system” Zhao Jing had been attempting to improve with this new design. 

The most damning piece of evidence, though, was a transcription from an online meeting that had occurred less than a month earlier, wherein Zhao Jing demanded that his scientists come up with a viable schedule for “phasing out the obsolete equipment.” 

There was also a series of emails and texts detailing a years-long history of Zhao Jing and Song Huairen enjoying recurring reunions of an explicitly intimate nature, whenever he happened to be near Yueyang, either in the network or in realspace. 

Xie Wang read all of this with exceptional composure and no expression on his face whatsoever. Discretion in all things was, after all, one of his highest directives. When he finished, he set the tablet down on the table and sat quietly for a few minutes before he finally began to speak. 

“This is a very complete picture you’ve painted for me,” he said evenly. “Why should I believe it’s genuine? You aren’t the first of my yifu’s enemies to try and turn me.” 

“Indeed,” Jing Beiyuan nodded. “And that’s why we’ve invited someone here today to speak with you, whose story you might like to hear.”

“Who?”

“Luo Fumeng,” Wen Kexing told him. 

Xie Wang’s eyes went wide. He clearly hadn’t expected this offer. 

“The Beauty Ghost and the Tragicomic Ghost are both here waiting in a server partition on my private network,” Wuxi explained, speaking up for the first time since they had gathered. “For obvious reasons they are unable to log on to the Jianghu Network for a public meeting, but you are welcome to speak with them here. Or, if you’re uncomfortable placing your consciousness behind our firewalls, I’ve set up a terminal in one of the guest bedrooms that can simulate a conference call with a proper AV interface.”

Xie Wang regarded Wuxi, evaluating. “The terminal is fine to start, assuming I can request access to the server partition if I decide it would be worth the risk.”

“Of course,” Wuxi nodded. “Follow me.” 

The pair of them stood to leave, shadowed by an anxious-looking Wen Kexing. 

Zhou Zishu followed, too, stopping Wen Kexing in the doorway of the guest room and murmuring, “this will go best if we give him some space to speak with them.” The primary objective here was gaining trust, after all. 

Wen Kexing looked ready to protest, but then settled, nodding, though the nervous look on his face remained. 

It only took Wuxi a few minutes to establish the connection, revealing a generic video-call interface. Luo Fumeng and Liu Qianqiao’s faces each appeared in a rectangular window on screen. 

Liu Qianqiao introduced first Luo Fumeng and then herself. 

Luo Fumeng seemed to be present today (both mentally and physically) and free of glitches, though her expression reminded Zhou Zishu of a caged animal. 

“You were Yu Qiufeng’s mistress,” Xie Wang said slowly, as though recalling a distant memory. “You were Liu Qianqiao.”

“That is my burden, yes,” Liu Qianqiao confirmed with an opaque, ‘customer-service’ smile. 

The scandal of Liu Qianqiao and Yu Qiufeng was well-known, and had been a very open secret even while it was going on years ago. When she learned about the affair Yu Qiufeng's wife had come after Liu Qianqiao, disfiguring her with a splash of acid to her face before having her beaten and left for dead on the floor of her own apartment. The original Liu Qianqiao was never seen again, having fled from her tormentors. After several weeks of searching she was presumed dead. Yu Qiufeng had been furious with his wife, but too weak-willed to confront her about it. Instead, to exact revenge he had sold Liu Qianqiao’s data to Zhao Jing where he intended for her to become a Companion model, so that he could resume his affair right where he’d left off.

But Zhao Jing’s scientists had failed in that experiment, creating a prototype with too few controls in place. When the Companion version of Liu Qianqiao had awakened she had reacted exactly as she would have in life, upon learning her fate — and had hacked into the laboratory’s network as soon as her beta tester’s back was turned, destroying her own file history along with every other active experiment onsite resulting in the greatest loss of data Zhao Jing’s company had ever sustained. The official statement said that the files were too corrupted to start over, but that was clearly a lie meant to save face when the prototype that had wreaked so much havoc had escaped to Ghost Valley.

Liu Qianqiao turned to address Wen Kexing over Xie Wang’s shoulder. 

“Hello, Boss. Would you please give us a few moments, if it isn’t too much to ask? My mistress gets more upset when more people are around, and more so when she needs to discuss the past. It would be more efficacious to our goals to help her feel calm, today. And I imagine Xie Wang would also prefer to have this conversation without an audience.” 

Unexpectedly, Zhou Zishu found himself biting back a grin. Liu Qianqiao’s expression was straightforward and innocent, but as an experienced spy he could hear the consideration and calculation that went into every syllable and gesture of her request. Every nuance was designed to disarm Xie Wang, removing any sense of encroaching threat that might trigger a reactionary defensive protocol, increasing the odds that they would be able to reason with him logically and bring him over to their side. If she was half as good at understanding humans as she was at other code entities, she would have been a truly magnificent Companion, Zhou Zishu realized, legitimately impressed. 

Wen Kexing hesitated, but Zhou Zishu pulled gently on his arm. “We can trust her,” he whispered softly. “We have to trust all of them. If you can’t believe in the integrity of their programming, you can trust the facts that Beiyuan compiled, and you can trust their need for revenge.”

Wen Kexing relented and allowed himself to be drawn from the room. 

“Start with the ‘Fidelity Protocol’ files and work from there,” he told Liu Qianqiao. “He’s read everything before that, already.” 

She nodded and smiled. As Wuxi left the room, closing the door behind them, Zhou Zishu could hear her speaking in her soft, clear voice, “It’s lovely to meet you, Xie Wang. Now that we have some privacy, how can we help you, today?” 

*********

Wuxi asked Wen Kexing for his help with dinner, and the two had just banished Ye Baiyi, Zhou Zishu, and Jing Beiyuan from the kitchen when they heard a knock at the front entrance. 

“Are you expecting guests?” Ye Baiyi asked mildly, not taking his eyes from the door.

“No,” Jing Beiyuan replied. “Is there a chance you might have been followed?” 

“Absolutely not.” 

Zhou Zishu believed him. There was no one on Earth better than remaining undetected than Ye Baiyi. But, then, who was at the door? Whoever it was hadn’t come in a car via the road, or they would have been alerted by the security feeds.

Zhou Zishu waved Jing Beiyuan back and approached quietly, flinging it open and dropping immediately into a wide stance that would permit him to defend against a blow, if necessary. But the quick, sharp motion was met only with three high-pitched shrieks of surprise.

Standing wide-eyed and anxious on the porch was Cao Weining, Gu Xiang’s new friend she’d met at Yueyang, with the allegedly-kidnapped Deng Kuan and Gao Xiaolian clustered behind him, looking tired and wary. It seemed the day’s excitement for the day was not yet over. 

Ye Baiyi burst out laughing at the absurdity of the tableau, and Zhou Zishu sheepishly relaxed his fighting stance. 

“It’s okay,” Jing Beiyuan called to Wuxi. “Zishu knows them.” 

Wen Kexing appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, brandishing a large vegetable knife at him with a theatrical flourish. “How did you find us here, you horrible little meat stick?” he demanded of Cao Weining with narrowed eyes.

Cao Weining’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates as he held up a hard drive in one hand, stammering, “A-Xiang told us where to go! You gave her the directions yourself. Here! She can explain if you don’t believe me, Wen-daren!” 

He hastily went on to explain that Gu Xiang was on the drive, safely smuggled away from Yueyeng and Zhao Jing inside the casing of his vintage music file player. 

“Nice,” Ye Baiyi chuckled. “Do you just keep the one girl in there, or do you have a collection?” 

Cao Weining looked aghast and began a fresh round of stammering. 

“Ignore him,” Zhou Zishu said with a sigh. “He just thinks it’s funny to annoy Lao Wen. Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friends?” 

Cao Weining startled again, apologizing profusely as he gestured for Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan to come in for a round of introductions. 

Gao Chong’s daughter greeted them with a warm smile, despite her obvious worry and fatigue. She was pretty in the way that wealth affords, soft and healthy from a life of comfort, but she had a confident handshake and poise that made her seem older than her eighteen years. 

Deng Kuan stuck close to her like a particularly imposing bodyguard, a broad, taciturn boy of nineteen who had few words, but sharp and clever eyes inside his looming frame. He was evidently besotted with Gao Xiaolian, a fact that was almost embarrassingly obvious in the way he looked at her every time she opened her mouth. 

“Look at them, they’re just like you and Wuxi as teenagers,” Zhou Zishu whispered to Jing Beiyuan with amused nostalgia. “The tiny, terrifying one with the expensive shoes and the hostile, brooding shadow.” Jing Beiyuan rolled his eyes and slapped Zhou Zishu’s arm in exasperation, but he did not try to deny it. 

Jing Beiyuan helped the weary travelers get settled in a room where they could plug into the private network. Wuxi hastily finished prepping dinner and set the pot on a low simmer, enlisting Lu Ta and Chengling to keep an eye on it, make rice, and set the table before logging on and inviting the whole bunch of them into the private conference room, so that they would be able to tell their story with Gu Xiang’s help. 

Gu Xiang flung herself into Wen Kexing’s arms almost as soon as she materialized, a streak of purple blurring through the room, but Zhou Zishu couldn’t help but notice that when it came time to tell their tale she moved across the table to sit with Cao Weining. Wen Kexing also noticed, if the sour look on his lovely face was anything to go by. 

“They grow up so fast,” he taunted, patting Wen Kexing’s thigh in mock sympathy. 

Wen Kexing turned to glare at him, but held his tongue. 

In excitable, disjointed tones the three kids and Gu Xiang explained what had happened to Gao Chong and Yueyang. 

It had been all over the news, of course. Every outlet was running headlines about Gao Chong being arrested for the Zhang Family’s murders, and the heart attack he’d suffered when they tried to bring him to jail. 

“It’s not true,” Deng Kuan said with absolute conviction. Gao Chong had been his mentor, and Deng Kuan was currently employed as his personal assistant as part of an internship program at his university. “He loved Zhang Yusen like a real brother. There’s absolutely no way he would have done this. He was framed, I would stake my life on it. I think the cops were in on it.” 

“They probably were,” Zhou Zishu acknowledged. 

“I suspect the heart attack was suicide,” Gao Xiaolian told them with stoic sadness. “He’s talked about it before in the abstract — what he would do if everything started to fall apart. It would have been an injection, most likely. No one would tell me anything before we had to run, but I can tell you he was beyond paranoid about his more sensitive tech falling into the wrong hands. If he had thought there was a risk of the information being tortured out of him, he would have opted for a clean break.”

“I see he was a more devoted businessman than a father,” Jing Beiyuan muttered under his breath with distaste. 

Zhou Zishu sighed heavily, and considered the awful truth: given what they’d learned about Zhen Yan and Wen Kexing, it was very likely that Gao Chong had ended himself over a falsehood — a few key codes that led nowhere, a little boy who had been dead for decades, and the myth of a perfect AI program that had never truly existed. 

There was another news story, though less sensational and therefore less widely reported, about the fall of the Five Lakes Alliance. The death of Shen Shen came as no surprise. Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing had been there on the train when it happened. But what they hadn’t yet heard was that Zhao Jing had just completely bought out Lu Taichong and was now the CEO of Danyan Corp. No one knew how that deal had gone down – Lu Taichong had apparently left the country with his entire family for an extended vacation and was unavailable for comment.

Having gotten Lu Taichong, Shen Shen, Zhang Yusen, and Gao Chong out of the way, Zhao Jin was now the sole owner of all of Five Lakes’ assets. This news in and of itself was worrying, because it put Zhao Jing in a position of power that was nearly unheard of in the current corporate landscape, but that wasn’t even the end of it. 

Before he’d gone on the run, Cao Weining had seen a press release on his boss’ desk announcing a merger between Five Lakes and Gentle Wind. 

Wuxi let out a low, mournful whistle. “Gentle Wind’s clients are all in the public sector, and most of them are military. Working so closely with Mo Huaikong and Gentle Wind will give Zhao Jing access to the top brass all over the country.” 

“And we can’t forget the known, existing ties he has with all the bluebloods in the private sector,” Zhou Zishu added. “Take Yu Qiufeng, for example. It’s common knowledge that he’s Zhao Jing’s toady, but his family also owns a prominent media outlet. It sounds like Zhao Jing is well on his way to setting himself above the law and above the government. We’re looking at an unprecedented power grab across the entire region.” 

“My god,” Jing Beiyuan commented, white as a ghost, “that’s an understatement. If he’s really got the entire military in his corner, has a functional monopoly on medical and scientific advancements, has the news outlets in his pockets, and keeps a rolodex full of senators and governors from all of his connections from his school days, he’ll have more resources than we ever had in Jin. We couldn’t have taken on a threat of that size back when we lived there, Zishu, and you know it. At that point, what would even be keeping him in this region?” 

A sick, anxious silence descended over the room, as they all tried to process the magnitude of Zhao Jing’s power play. Zhou Zishu had to hand it to him, both for his patience in playing the long game, and the sheer audacity it would take to try anything like this at all. The man had to be stopped.

“Well,” Wen Kexing said at length. “We clearly have some work to do. Can we speak with the others, now?” 

Wuxi nodded, standing to unlock a door that would lead them into the server partition where Luo Fumeng and Liu Qianqiao were currently staying. “Let’s go, everyone.” 

The space was a simple living room with generic furniture and decorations. It reminded Zhou Zishu of a hotel lobby, or a furniture display room at a department store.

“A-Xiang?” Luo Fumeng murmured as the group made their way inside. Liu Qianqiao turned to look and smiled with pleased surprise, standing to greet them. Gu Xiang squealed with joy and ran straight to the women, showering both of the other Ghosts with hugs and happy tears as the others filed in behind her. 

Not everyone was so happy to be there, though. Gao Xiaolian gasped, face going white with fear as she backed slowly up against the wall. Everyone turned to find her staring at Xie Wang. 

“What is this?” Deng Kuan demanded defensively as Gu Xiang frowned and blurted out, “Ge, what the hell is he doing here? He’s no good!” 

Xie Wang gave no reaction at all to the commotion, sitting motionless and contrite on a low sofa behind the women, staring silently down at his hands folded in his lap. His face was completely devoid of expression. 

He must be heartbroken, Zhou Zishu thought with an unexpected pang of sympathy. Whatever Liu Qianqiao had told him, it had done the job.

“Calm down, everyone, and we’ll explain,” Wuxi promised, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. 

“You knew he was here?” Gu Xiang asked Wen Kexing, visibly confused.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Wen Kexing replied with a wolfish smile, walking to stand beside her. Zhou Zishu followed.

Gu Xiang’s eyes went momentarily glassy, devoid of comprehension. After a beat she cocked her head and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Can you try saying it another way?” 

The tone was bright and polite and formal, and it sounded so unlike Gu Xiang that Zhou Zishu wondered if she might be glitching. 

Wen Kexing only chuckled, reaching out to flick her forehead. “Yes. Sit down, you overengineered chatbot, and listen while the grownups talk.” 

Gu Xiang blinked a few times, evidently coming back to herself, and did as she was told, scowling at Wen Kexing as she went. 

Zhou Zishu raised an eyebrow at the bizarre interaction and Wen Kexing shrugged. “She was, you know. A chatbot. Back when I found her, I mean. Sometimes when she’s confused she defaults back to her old canned responses while she’s buffering.” 

“You could fix that so easily,” Zhou Zishu said, fully aware that he’s pointing out the obvious.

“Funnier this way,” Wen Kexing replied with an evil smirk. “She absolutely hates it.” 

Oh my god, Zhou Zishu marveled, choking back laughter, I’m in love with an asshole. 

They moved to join the group where Jing Beiyuan and Liu Qianqiao were wrapping up a brief explanation of Xie Wang’s presence in their unlikely band of allies. 

The three teenagers seemed unconvinced, which is understandable given how much Scorpion-related violence and bloodshed they all must have witnessed in their young lives. 

“He has more reason to hate Zhao Jing than anyone else here, now that he has all the facts,” Jing Beiyuan pointed out. “And we trust that he’s pragmatic enough to see how this has to play out.”

Xie Wang folded in on himself, clenching his hands together. He did not reply. 

“Don’t worry, kids. No matter what happens, I’ll keep an eye on him,” Ye Baiyi offered with a wink. Cao Weining gave him a grateful smile. 

Gao Xiaolian and Deng Kuan still looked unsure, but they settled down politely on a small loveseat together, apparently willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. 

“Do you understand what must be done?” Wen Kexing asked Xie Wang. “Surely you see, now, what a danger he poses to us all.” 

Xie Wang looked up, clearly miserable, but still hesitant. 

“A-Xiang! The recordings!” 

“Oh! Yes!” Gu Xiang exclaimed, leaping to her feet. “Ge, we found some footage yesterday you need to see.” 

Without further preamble she ran over to the media center, opening up its network interface console to play a video file from her own data storage on the room’s big, flat-screen TV. 

The footage in question was a security feed from Zhao Jing’s veranda, where he was recorded enjoying an outdoor cocktail with Mo Huaiyang. The conversation was clear and straightforward. In it, Mo Huaiyang demanded that Zhao Jing join his cause to destroy all sentient code, insisting such entities were a failed experiment in the uses of computing technology, novel but ultimately too dangerous to be allowed to persist. Zhao Jing agreed with barely a hesitation, hypothesizing aloud about ways to dissolve the AI focused workshops at all five of the Five Lakes organizations and absorb them into other departments. He asked for Mo Huaiyang’s help rallying an army, saying they would set out to destroy Ghost Valley first, and then move on to “the rest of the trash.” 

Zhou Zishu’s stomach twisted at the ease with which these two men discussed the issue. If Xie Wang had needed anything else to steel his resolve… surely this was enough.  

“Good work, Meimei,” Wen Kexing told Gu Xiang, eyes flashing with rage. Then he turned to Xie Wang for a second time. “Will you join us?”  

Xie Wang looked up at him, mechanical and too still. “I’m not sure I can be of use to you. I can’t… I’m programmed not to harm him. Keeping him safe is one of my most fundamental protocols. It cannot be overwritten.”  

“We aren’t asking you to hurt him,” Ye Baiyi piped up from his seat in the corner. “We’re asking you to stay out of our way and let us work. And, if possible, to help us minimize the collateral damage. Really, if you’ll agree to smuggle me back inside and simply stay out of the way, I can take care of the rest.” 

“Don’t you have friends in the Scorpions?” Gu Xiang asked. “Don’t you want to warn them what’s coming?” 

“Of course I do!” Xie Wang shouted, hoarse and too-loud, bringing up his hands to clutch at his head. “I want to live! I want my Scorpions to live! Do you think I want to be this way? Even the most pathetic life forms are allowed to follow the instinct to survive above all else. But I am not permitted this privilege. My own life… is secondary. It’s how I was designed.” 

He paused, closing his eyes and visibly collecting himself. When he looked up again to address Ye Baiyi, he seemed more like the version of himself Zhou Zishu had met on the train. He didn’t look human, not quite, but he was a vivid approximation of one. 

“I want to let you in, as you’ve asked,” Xie Wang explained to Ye Baiyi. “The logic is sound. Here, now, I understand what must be done. But… I already feel uneasy, and the closer we get to him, the more powerful the protective urge will be. What will you do if we arrive and I try to kill you because I know your intentions?” 

Something like sadness crossed Ye Baiyi’s face. “If that happens, kid, I’ll try to kill you right back.” 

“The risk of failure is too high,” Xie Wang concluded decisively, shaking his head. “The odds are far too poor to proceed.” 

“Ah, but you’re wrong,” Jing Beiyuan interjected with a pleasantly thoughtful look on his face. “There is a logical fallacy in the notion that to protect Zhao Jing you must keep us out. In fact, I think that you’ll find the opposite is true. You’re being short sighted, Xie Wang.”

Xie Wang’s attention snapped to him immediately, eyes narrowed. “Explain.” 

Zhou Zishu found himself repressing a shiver of unease at the silvery gleam in Jing Beiyuan’s eyes, calculating and fierce and completely at odds with the soft, almost flirtatious smile he was wearing. This was certainly a pavlovian response; Zhou Zishu had seen that expression on his friend’s face many times before, years ago — it was the face of a man who has made and broken dynasties, a quiet predator on the prowl. Next to Zhou Zishu, Wuxi went still, clearly thinking something along the same lines. The two exchanged a silent look. 

Jing Beiyuan proceeded to spend the better part of thirty minutes debating logic with a literal computer, and somehow… he seemed to be winning. 

He convinced Xie Wang with relative ease of the troubling subjectivity of the human mind, and managed, with several poignant historical examples, to illustrate the importance of mitigating human fallibility via a system of checks and balances so that no one person is permitted to wield absolute, unquestioned power over all others. 

Zhou Zishu lost focus somewhere in the middle of the discussion about the horrible violent fates that have befallen tyrannical rulers throughout history, and tuned back in somewhere in the middle of a lecture about the practical difficulties of governing as a despot against the will of the people, with a list of extremely graphic, colorful supporting examples. 

“Is he always this long-winded?” Wen Kexing asked under his breath with a hint of wonder, running a distracting fingernail along Zhou Zishu’s thigh under the table. Zhou Zishu slapped his hand away.

“He used to be worse,” Wuxi sighed, every inch the long-suffering husband. “But we do have to get him to wrap up, I think, or dinner will be ruined by the time he runs out of energy.” 

Zhou Zishu snickered, “Oh, that’s not fair. He’s being almost direct! He’s obviously out of practice.” 

Their whispering earned them a dirty look from Jing Beiyuan, but he did nod his acquiescence when Wuxi gestured pointedly at his wristwatch in a universally understood sign to get to the point. 

“...and so,” he said brightly, “in summary: Zhao Jing is a human. Humans cannot become experts in all fields in one lifetime. Humans are by their nature unfit to lead groups of other humans without proper support, including advisors, experts, and educators who can help them to understand problems outside the realms of their own expertise. Zhao Jing has already dissolved the relationship with his peers in Five Lakes which led to so many of the historical successes he’s had in his business endeavors, and now he is seeking to put himself beyond the reach of law and order. In doing so he is walking a treacherous path, where a single misstep could mean a painful, early death. The numbers of other humans who wish him harm will grow at an exponential rate. The attempts on his life will continue to increase at a similar rate until the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against him. And who will protect him, then? You and the Scorpions? Come now, Xie Wang. It would be an incredibly human, overly prideful boast for you to tell us you can protect him from every unseen threat Zhao Jing’s chosen course will manifest.” 

Xie Wang nodded thoughtfully, and his eyes had more life in them than Zhou Zishu had seen all day. “I do, indeed see your point, Mister Jing,” he concedes with a smile. “This conversation has been highly instructive. You have illustrated your argument admirably and I have come to understand, based on the empirical evidence you have cited, that the biggest threat facing my yifu today… is himself.” 

“Precisely,” Jing Beiyuan agreed, beatific. 

“And so, considering my highest directive is to protect him at all costs, I am not only allowed to permit you into our home to carry out your work…” 

“You are essentially required to let us in,” Jing Beiyuan nodded. “To do otherwise would allow him to move forward with this foolhardy, impossible dream he has, needlessly putting himself in harm's way for the rest of his life.” 

Xie Wang’s smile grew soft, and a little dreamy. “I must protect him from himself,” he said, as though he was savoring each word. “It’s what he made me to do. This is my purpose.” 

“Precisely.” 

“Well then… in that case, there’s really nothing more to say, is there? We can leave for Yueyang as soon as you’re prepared.” He stood and extended his hand. 

Jing Beiyuan rose too, reaching out to complete the handshake with a dazzling smile. “I knew you’d see reason, as soon as you had a clearer idea of the big picture. Computers are so much more logical than we are.”

“It’s kind of you to say so,” Xie Wang smiled, a paragon of programmed etiquette.  

“Oh, my,” Wen Kexing whispered in awe, gaping at Jing Beiyuan. “He’s terrifying.”

“He’s mellowed in his old age,” Zhou Zishu replied, feeling weary.

Jing Beiyuan was insufferably pleased with himself. Everyone rose from the table looking a bit dizzy and muddled, a common side effect of being near Jing Beiyuan for extended periods of time.

Gu Xiang gave both Wen Kexing and Cao Weining warm hugs and wished them good night, settling in for the evening with Luo Fumeng, Liu Qianqiao, and Xie Wang in their server partition.

Wuxi cheerfully escorted the rest of them out and back into realspace, where they all gathered in the kitchen, joined by Lu Ta and Zhang Chengling.

“Tomorrow we work, and it will take us all day to get ready for this fight,” Wu Xi told them, adjusting the seasonings he’s added to the pot on the stove. Then he turned to face the room and gave them one of his rare, roguish smiles. “But for now… we eat. Come grab a bowl.”

Chapter Text

Their motley crew spent the next day planning, preparing, and organizing their tangled web of logistics and strategy. This was the sort of scheming Zhou Zishu hadn’t done in months, though if he were being honest all of it still felt more natural to him than his so-called retirement. Something like nostalgia fluttered behind his breastbone as they sat around a large table in the Network with trusted teammates, questionable allies, and Jing Beiyuan’s terrifyingly mild smile at the head of the table leading them all with effortless grace, like the seasoned conductor of a deadly symphony. 

It wasn’t regret, exactly. The bitter aches of his failing nerves and muscles were far too fresh in his mind, for that. No, he’d been happy to leave his career as a corporate spook behind him. Jin Industries had stolen his youth, his health, and his soul, and Zhou Zishu would be damned if they’d own his death, too. But, hell, he and Jing Beiyuan had been good at their work, hadn’t they? 

They called us “the kingmakers” for a reason. A twisted sort of fondness welled in his chest as he looked across the table at Jing Beiyuan, smiling when his beautiful friend glanced up, found him looking, and gave him a knowing wink. 

Wen Kexing, seated next to him, watched their silent exchange with a sharp, wary sort of interest, then batted his eyes and opened his mouth in a way that meant he was about to say something particularly obnoxious, but was intercepted by the ever-watchful Wuxi, who held up a map of Sanbai Holding’s network topography, asking Wen Kexing to verify its accuracy based on his most recent explorations. 

Zhou Zishu sighed with relief. Wuxi had been similarly jealous of Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan, years ago; of course he’d notice Wen Kexing’s restlessness. Hopefully, just like him, Wen Kexing would eventually come to understand that such jealousy was a waste of energy. What Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan shared wasn’t romance, it wasn't even love in the poetic sense of the word. It was simply… mutual understanding at the deepest level, friendship born of shared battles, spilled blood, and an ease with monstrosity and violence that most men never have the chance to face in themselves. 

Under the table Zhou Zishu pressed his thigh against Wen Kexing’s, a soft, silent reassurance. Don’t be stupid, Lao Wen. He isn’t you, is he?

He felt Wen Kexing relax beside him, sensed the shift in mood like a change in the weather. And so he was ready when Wen Kexing’s clever, wicked hand settled on his knee and ran up his inseam. Zhou Zishu retaliated with a vicious pinch to the soft skin below Wen Kexing’s ribs, knocking his chair off balance and nearly sending him sprawling to the ground. 

The situation devolved from there, and ended up with the two of them tussling like dogs on the floor of Wuxi’s conference room, with Xie Wang judgementally muttering something to Liu Qianqiao about “intricate rituals,” and Jing Beiyuan scolding them both imperiously about controlling themselves in front of the children.

*********

Back in realspace that evening, those in their group who had physical bodies available worked on their weapons and tactical equipment. Cleaning guns and testing communications connections made the impending danger of the whole situation much more real, somehow, leaving everyone a bit restless as they anxiously pushed through the tedious work. 

Gao Xiaolian and Jing Beiyuan made polite conversation in an attempt to keep the mood in the room light. Wuxi had pressed Lu Ta and Zhang Chengling into assisting him with making dinner. The scents wafting in from the kitchen made her curious about the rich, spicy cuisine from Wuxi’s native Nanjiang. 

“Does A-Xiang like spicy food?” Cao Weining asked dreamily. “I could ask Wu-xiong to teach me, if she does.”

Wen Kexing took a deep breath and put down the body camera he was configuring with an exasperated sigh.“You do know, idiot, that Gu Xiang isn’t a person?”

Cao Weining looked at him with wide, hurt eyes. “Of course she is! What have we been working for this whole time, if we can’t see that you’re people?” 

Wen Kexing was unimpressed with the boy’s idealism. “I am a person. Qianqiao is a person. Xie Wang is a person. Gu Xiang… Gu Xiang is marvelous, but she’s simply not built from complex enough programs to achieve a human level of awareness.” 

“She’s not stupid!” Cao Weining protested.

Ye Baiyi snickered. “It’s not that, kid. There are orders of magnitude in cognitive aptitude and the fact is that the girl’s fundamental architecture won’t support the kind of extensive growth required for her to be a truly independent thinker. Surely you’ve seen what happens when the conversation goes off-script from topics she understands?”

Cao Weining straightened and stuck out his chin. “Wen-xiong, Ye-Laoshi, stop. I am inexperienced and naive, I know. It’s almost gotten me killed very recently. But I’m not an idiot. When my life was in danger, Gu Xiang saved me. She is kind, she is loyal, and she cares very deeply for her loved ones. She deserves to be cared for similarly, in return. Doesn’t she? It’s only right. Besides, even if you don’t believe I truly have her best interests in mind, maybe you can believe I was not raised to leave my debts unpaid? She saved my life. I won’t abandon her.” 

“Fair enough, kid,” Ye Baiyi conceded with a lazy wave of his hand. “It’s just good for you to know what you’re signing up for.”

Wen Kexing nodded, clearly skeptical but not in the mood to press the issue, and went back to his work. Zhou Zishu noticed Xie Wang staring at Cao Weining from across the table. He was silent, still as a predator hiding in tall grass, apparently caught between wariness and wonder, like he had never seen a person like Cao Weining before, had never heard someone describe being kind and thoughtful to an AI entity as a matter of human decency. 

“What about you two?” Jing Beiyuan addressed Deng Kuan and Gao Xiaolian. “What are your thoughts on the matter of Gu Xiang’s humanity?”

Gao Xiaolian looked thoughtful as she considered the question. “Recently, when my father died I was kidnapped by hackers,” she told them after a few moments. “These were people whose families had been destroyed during the fallout of the Zhen family tragedy years ago… the situation polarized them, turned them into anarchists. Deng Kuan was poisoned at the time, and in a coma. His Jianghu avatar had been hacked and hijacked by spies who were pretending to be him while he was unconscious. He couldn’t even help himself, let alone me.”

She paused, snapped a clip into a handgun, tested the mechanism to ensure the bullets moved seamlessly from the clip to the chamber, then unloaded the gun and set it aside before continuing. 

“It was Gu Xiang who helped Cao Weining escape from Gentle Wind when they went into a security lockdown. Gu Xiang helped him rescue both of us, found us discreet medical care for Kuan-ge, and helped me forge papers about his identity. I’ve honestly never thought much about the ethics of AI entities before now. That was my dad’s work, and isn’t my area of study. Still, I know all three of us would be dead — or worse — without Gu Xiang my father’s memory would be lost forever to slander and false accusations. Is she a person? I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that. But what I can say is that she is my savior, and my ally. I consider her a friend. And I take care of my friends.”

Zhou Zishu couldn’t help but smile at the steely conviction in her soft, polite voice. She had more of her father in her than he’d previously expected. It suited her. 

*********

At exactly nineteen hundred hours Jing Beiyuan swept through the house commanding everyone to wind down preparations for the day. 

“So early?” Wen Kexing inquired, quirking an eyebrow. 

“Yep.” Zhou Zishu smiled with nostalgia, remembering how Jing Beiyuan always used to do this too, had even made it an official policy at work to shut it down at a designated time, demanding that people step away from their work, accepting no arguments to the contrary. It was a good policy, and one Zhou Zishu had tried to maintain with his own team after Jing Beiyuan’s departure. 

“We’re people, not machines,” Zhou Zishu smiled. “Well, most of us are, anyway. Fatigue makes people stupid. Stupid people make mistakes. Mistakes get you killed. Besides, I think dinner is ready, and I’m starving.”

Over dinner they couldn’t stop talking about the old days. To include everyone and strengthen their rapport before the mission, Wuxi set up a conference on his largest monitor so that Liu Qianiao, Gu Xiang, and Luo Fumeng could join them onscreen. 

In the end, it was Jing Beiyuan and Zhou Zishu who did most of the talking, interrupted only by occasional acerbic commentary from Wuxi. At least the kids were enjoying it — Chengling was wide-eyed with delight at their old war stories and Lu Ta seemed just as fascinated. Clearly, The kid was getting a chance to see his dads in a whole new light. How many other opportunities had Jing Beiyuan had to tell the kid about his work as a white collar spy for one of the biggest corporations on the globe?  

There was a lot to tell, and much of it quite sensational. Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan had taken down more than their share of bad guys. It was only a shame, in retrospect, that the cost had been so many innocent lives. Still, the years had softened the edges of their stories, turning the horrors into adventures, allowing the brutality and betrayal to fade into the background under a patina of idealism and a commitment to the greater good. 

Was it forgivable to be a monster when your heart was in the right place? Zhou Zishu doubted whether he’d ever be sure. He’d never cared much for philosophy. 

Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing exchanged looks of surprise when disagreeable, taciturn Ye Baiyi unexpectedly volunteered a story or two of his own. 

An air of shocked silence fell over the table as he confessed with falsely flippant humor and carefully calculated casualness that his main objective in joining them was to finish “cleaning up” after Rong Changqing, who had been one of the first pioneers of research into actual autonomous artificial life. (“Playing God,” Ye Baiyi had scoffed, his bitterness plain on his face.) Rong had been a legend in his field —  the mentor of all the current CEO’s from Five Lakes — he’d trained Qin Huaizhang too, in the early days of Siji Holdings. There was no one at the table whose lives hadn’t been touched by his work. It was easy to forget that before any of that, he'd just been an ordinary man, full of flaws like any other ordinary man. 

Beside Zhou Zishu, Wen Kexing broke the silence with a very sad, very human sigh, face contorted in grief. “I met him when I was a child. His son’s wife was my mom’s best friend.” 

“Rong Xuan…” Ye Baiyi murmured, glancing to Wen Kexing and away again, like it hurt to look at him all of a sudden. It sounded like, “I’m sorry.” 

“Oh…” Gao Xiaolian breathed, “But my father said Rong Xuan was the one who—” Deng Kuan put a warning hand on her arm and her jaw snapped shut. 

“That’s right,” Wen Kexing said, nodding. “He… was obsessed with his father’s work, driven past the point of ethical concerns. He turned on my parents when they wouldn’t give up their data to him. It… He was the one who started the witch-hunt that killed them.” 

“No he wasn’t,” came a soft, melodic voice. Zhou Zishu had almost forgotten Xie Wang was there, with how quietly he was sitting in the corner. But now he looked between Wen Kexing and Ye Baiyi with a carefully polite expression on his face. “Or. He may have been, technically, but he wasn’t acting under his own power. I have come to understand that he had… external motivators.” 

Wen Kexing growled deep in his throat, and Zhou Zishu didn’t even try to hush him. He was suddenly, abruptly glad that they were already on their way to killing Zhao Jing so he didn’t have to come up with a plan all on his own to do it. How many lives had this bastard destroyed? 

“Changqing hated what he built,” Ye Baiyi said with a grim smile. “His heart was broken by the violence it caused. Fuck! It made his own kid go nuts and take his own life, along with the lives of his best friends. And then they all called him a visionary. Everyone in the fucking field talked about him like he was the fucking messiah of biological science. Ha! Changqing called himself the Oppenheimer for our age. Then he died.” 

There was a grief in his tone, in his face, that Zhou Zishu found far too familiar. He saw it in his own face, in the mirror, every time he thought about Jiuxiao. It made his gut twist.

“We’re going to make it right, Ye Qianbei,” he said, taking care to keep every trace of sympathy from his voice, as though providing comfort was the farthest thing from his mind. These were simple facts, after all. “We’ll fix it, tomorrow. Our job is to make it right.” 

Xie Wang’s perfectly designed face looked fascinated. Zhou Zishu would pay to know what the dossiers on the two of them looked like, stored in his memory banks. 

“Second thoughts, little computer?” Ye Baiyi asked him. 

Xie Wang blinked, processing. He hadn’t expected to be asked for his opinion. “No,” he said after a moment, addressing Ye Baiyi as though his question had been sincere, and not dripping with sarcasm. “Only a very sick animal causes such damage to its own home. Programs much simpler than me could tell you that. And viruses must be neutralized.” 

That earned him a wolfish grin from Ye Baiyi. “Fuck, kid,” he said, “I wish Changqing could see you here, today. It’d make him feel better to know you were here and fighting with us.” 

Xie Wang smiled and looked away, a computer approximating embarrassment. 

“Is that right?” Jing Beiyuan asked. “Why?”

Xie Wang turned to him with an uncanny valley sort of blink and paused, cocking his head like a bird. “Rong Changqing designed the scaffolding my personality was built on. It was stolen, of course, but no one is supposed to know that. Still, a talented enough hacker could figure it out, if he were rude, and nosy, and had a lot of time on his hands.” 

At that Ye Baiyi let out a loud squawk of indignation, followed by a boisterous, full belly laugh. Xie Wang smiled at him sweetly, the perfect picture of innocence. And just like that, the thick cloud of grief and loss that was choking them all dissipated. Everyone chuckled, and they refilled their drinks. 

The conversation remained lighthearted for the rest of their meal, and everyone lingered at the table until Gao Xiaolian let out a big yawn. 

She clapped her hands over her face in embarrassment, but Jing Beiyuan nudged her and gave her a kind smile. 

“You must be exhausted. What would you say to a bubble bath?”

Her eyes sparkled with surprised delight. “Really?”  

He nodded, conspiratorial. “Let me show you where we keep all the supplies.” 

They left, followed closely by Deng Kuan, and everyone else began to clear the table. They bid goodnight to their digital companions and Wuxi disconnected the video call.

Zhou Zishu’s entire body ached. He thought that it would take a lot more than a bubble bath to set him right. 

As they cleaned the kitchen, Wen Kexing gave Cao Weining a considering look.  

“Can I help you, Wen-xiong?” he asked when he noticed Wen Kexing staring. 

“I don’t know you,” Wen Kexing told him softly, “and I don’t trust you. You don’t seem very smart, so let me be clear. If you ever harm her in any way, you will die slowly, painfully, and publicly in disgrace.“

Cao Weining’s handsome face went pale, but he thrust his chin out and looked Wen Kexing straight in the eye as he replied, “If I let her come to harm, I would deserve it.” 

This seemed to appease Wen Kexing. “I’m glad we understand each other,” he said, then went back to drying dishes. 

Zhou Zishu was reaching up to put a stack of plates into a cabinet when a momentary flash of agony ran through his arm, a lightning bolt from shoulder to fingertips. He failed to contain a hiss, and sure enough both Wuxi and Wen Kexing turned to him with unnecessary concern. 

“A-xu?” 

“It's fine,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand. “I’m always like this.” 

“That’s not particularly comforting, Zishu,” Wuxi chastised, wry. “Let me take a look? I may be able to help.”  

Zhou Zishu was fairly sure his body was beyond help, but there was no point in arguing with Wuxi under the best of circumstances, let alone when Wen Kexing was making worried, kicked-puppy faces at him over Wuxi’s shoulder. 

“God, you’re nothing but a couple of mother hens, clucking over nothing…” he groused, but it was just for the sake of complaining. He put up no further resistance as he allowed himself to be steered out of the kitchen and towards Wuxi’s lab. 

*********

The look on Wuxi’s face as he looked over the output from his medical scanners was patient and too-kind. It was the same bland look of neutral sympathy that every doctor wore when they were trying to figure out how to say bleak news in the least terrifying way they could. 

Fucking intolerable . 

“Zishu, you haven’t been resting enough. You’re not well, you need to take better care of yourself.” 

“I’ve been a little busy!” Zhou Zishu exhaled through his nose, exasperated at the defensive note in his own voice. 

Wuxi sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose.  “I know. I’m sorry, I know this is important, but—” he cut himself off with a shake of his head, then took a deep breath and began again. “I’m going to knock you out and give your body a treatment overnight to deal with the nerve pain. No, don’t start. This is not up for debate. If you’re this stiff tomorrow you know it’ll be a liability, and you’re the most experienced person on our entire team with this kind of work. We need you functional and rested.” 

Zhou Zishu met Wen Kexing’s eyes, not bothering to hide his annoyance. He didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to fuck. Who knew if they’d even live through tomorrow? God damn his stupid, useless body. 

Wen Kexing looked back at him, face twisted in concern.

Zhou Zishu swallowed the impulse to start a fight about it, to snap at them both for treating him like he was made of glass. It would be a bitchy thing to do, taking it out on them. And it’s not like they were wrong, anyway. 

“I’m not sleepy,” he pinned Wuxi with a pointed look. 

Wuxi looked for a moment between him and Wen Kexing, then gave him a knowing, slightly reproving stare.

Zhou Zishu shrugged one shoulder, shameless. He had better things to do than sleep. Besides, if Wuxi had a man as hot as Wen Kexing, he’d damn well want to fuck him before they possibly died. In fact, Zhou Zishu would be willing to bet those were precisely his plans for the current evening with Jing Beiyuan. 

In the end Wuxi relented. “The configuration for your old room is still saved here. Give me a minute and I’ll set the permissions so you can both access that network partition for the evening, if Wen-xiong would like to keep you company.”

“Perfect,” Zhou Zishu said sweetly. 

“You,” Wuxi pointed at Wen Kexing, “make sure he gets some sleep.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Wen Kexing nodded, the picture of angelic obedience.

Wuxi snickered and shook his head, reaching for Zhou Zishu’s wrist to start an IV. “You deserve each other  — as a punishment."

Zhou Zishu grinned and closed his eyes, leaning back to let Wuxi work. He liked the sound of that.

*********

“What room is this?” Wen Kexing asked, scrutinizing  the disused virtual space: a comfortable bedroom with a wide desk for work, but no personal effects of any kind to give it character. It looked like a well-appointed hotel room more than anything else.

“It was mine, a long time ago. I spent a lot of time with Beiyuan and Wuxi back in the old days. I needed a space of my own to escape sometimes. It was exhausting watching them together, they flirted like they were waging war.” 

“Oh, so I have them to blame for your abhorrent behavior? You learned it from watching them?”

Zhou Zishu tried to look exasperated at the teasing but he was too light, half-giddy with the sudden relief of pain that jacking into a network always provided: the abrupt freedom from his physical form. 

It made space, however, for the anxiety. Their impending mission, the memory of Wuxi’s worried face kept surfacing in his mind unwanted. He couldn’t banish the swirl of pent-up awareness of his own mortality from his gut but he knew he could transform it, and could focus that energy on a different goal. 

Without thinking, he reached up and grabbed Wen Kexing by his stupid white hair, dragging him down for a kiss.

Wen Kexing gasped and yielded, his warm, strong arms coming up around Zhou Zishu and pulling him close as he let his mouth be pried open into a biting, sucking, filthy sort of kiss, the kind of kiss that Zhou Zishu never used to imagine wanting, let alone initiating. Yet desperation buzzing under his skin was overriding the last dregs of self-awareness. “Fuck me,” he growled into Wen Kexing’s open mouth, twisting the hand in his hair and holding him close to nip at his ear.  

Wen Kexing shivered and Zhou Zishu wanted him and Zhou Zishu didn’t want to die and Zhou Zishu was trying not to mourn himself yet, and Wen Kexing was already hard, and Zhou Zishu wanted to distract him from the failures of his fucking stupid, pathetic, human body.

“We’re meant to be getting some sleep,” Wen Kexing croaked out what was perhaps the least persuasive objection he had ever made. 

“Not sleepy…” 

“Wuxi told me to let you rest. Your body—”

“We might not live through tomorrow. I don’t want to fucking sleep, Lao Wen. Do you?” 

“... No.” 

“Then come here. Make yourself useful.” 

Zhou Zishu stretched out a hand for Wen Kexing, taking him by the hair to pull him in for another kiss. Wen Kexing melted into him. One big, warm hand settled at Zhou Zishu’s waist and the other on the curve of his back, and Zhou Zishu hummed in pleasure, surrendering control of the kiss, marveling at the way Wen Kexing's hands made him burn. He wanted more. He was starving for it. 

It’s never been like this with anyone else, before. The thought was honest, and wretchedly embarrassing for a man of his age and experience. It made him squirm, and that made him restless. He bit at Wen Kexing’s mouth impatiently. 

Wen Kexing was breathing quicker now, clearly excited by the closeness of their bodies, by the way Zhou Zishu was already hard, pressed against his hip. Zhou Zishu could feel him growing even harder against his own belly. He reached down to touch it and Wen Kexing shivered, deliciously responsive to even such a simple caress.

No one had ever wanted Zhou Zishu this badly.  Being the object of this man’s desire, he craved to rip himself open, to get him in, become a part of him. He wanted to let Wen Kexing feast on him until he tore through to some part of Zhou Zishu buried deep down that wasn’t broken, that wasn’t decaying, some part of him that was still vital and good. Something worthy of this man, to consume — something that would sustain him. He wanted to be devoured, consumed ... 

He could do anything to me, I think, and it would feel good.

Zhou Zishu clawed impatient at Wen Kexing’s clawing shoulders, leaving red gouges in the pale skin of his upper back. Wen Kexing hissed at the sting, throwing his head back before diving back down to bite at the racing pulse in Zhou Zishu’s throat. 

Eventually they broke apart to breathe. Wen Kexing’s mouth was swollen, his pupils blown out to black. That awful white fringe fell into his eyes, mussed, which made his eyes look even darker by contrast. 

“A-xu…”  

Zhou Zishu was very aware of his hands, the way his fingertips dug into Zhou Zishu’s skin like he was struggling for control. It ignited the restlessness under Zhou Zishu’s skin, feeding his desire until he was swollen with it, and clumsy with need. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Zhou Zishu croaked against his throat, scraping his teeth along the Adam’s apple. 

“Yes,” Wen Kexing sighed, dragging out the word like a snake’s hiss, giving Zhou Zishu’s ass a possessive, greedy squeeze before allowing him to stand.

Zhou Zishu stripped artlessly, perfunctorily, trying to be nonchalant and falling utterly short. Then he spread himself on the bed naked, face down. His heart in his throat with anticipation, he forced himself not to look back over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure he could look Wen Kexing in the face tonight. He thought of tomorrow, how it might be the the end of him, the end of everything, and— 

Fuck. 

For the first time in years, Zhou Zishu wanted more time. It would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetic. He never cared about dying before. What a miserable fucking time to start. And so he buried his face in his crossed arms and waited until Wen Kexing, also naked now, settled over him, his warmth pressed full-length against Zhou Zishu’s back like a weighted blanket. 

Fuck , how he wanted to live, wanted to live with Wen Kexing , as Wen Kexing hummed, oblivious and content, rocked against him, holding him close as his hard cock pressed deliciously into the cleft of Zhou Zishu's ass, like a promise. His mind overflowed with wishes and what-ifs as the weight of Wen Kexing, the smell of him — as distinctive here in the network as it was out in realspace, in the borrowed body Wuxi had crafted for him — folded around Zhou Zishu, pressing into him until it was impossible to concentrate on anything but the nearness of him. He wondered whether this would be the last time they got to do this, and his gut hollowed out with fear that threatened to overwhelm him entirely, a premature sort of mourning. 

This dramatic, ridiculous, arrogant Wen Kexing, who was terrifying and alien and strange, and who was maybe the best thing that had ever happened to Zhou Zishu in his miserable life. What if… Gently, coaxing, as though he could sense some of the turmoil brewing under Zhou Zishu’s skin, Wen Kexing slid his hand down to cup his cock with a soft and steady squeeze. Zhou Zishu's stomach flipped, clenched, fear dissolving into fluttering anticipation. He pressed his forehead more firmly now against his folded arms, panting wetly into his skin. 

Wen Kexing was breathing hard now too, now, his breath hot against the back of Zhou Zishu's neck as he nuzzled there, mouthing at his skin and murmuring nonsense praise. He bit wet, open-mouthed kisses between Zhou Zishu’s shoulders, along the protruding knobs of his spine — still visible even if it was less prominent here in the network than out in the real world — and slowly jerked Zhou Zishu’s cock with tight, slow, dragging twists of his wrist. 

Losing track of time in these small undulations that set off bursts of shivering light behind Zhou Zishu’s closed eyelids, until Wen Kexing shifted his hips in a way that dragged the head of his cock against the furl of Zhou Zishu’s hole and they both shuddered. Zhou Zishu swallowed, mouth flooding with saliva as a wave of desperation washed through him between one breath and the next, sucking up all of the oxygen in the room. 

"Lao Wen," he croaked, shivering. “You—” he couldn’t even finish the thought. His mind was too scattered for words, unable to think through the force of his desire.

Wen Kexing whined, reading his mind in shared  desperation . He let go of Zhou Zishu’s cock and shifted his weight back until he was kneeling back on his heels. Zhou Zishu trembled with want and premature grief. A soothing hand brushed down his side, sending  shivers through his whole frame, leaving him shockingly aware of his body, of his skin, disoriented by the intensity  of his own primal desire. 

Would it always be like this, between them? 

(Would they live long enough to find out?) 

The next touch of Wen Kexing's fingers was slippery, brushing against his rim. Zhou Zishu’s thighs twitched as he relaxed and let his legs spread wider. Here in the network his body yielded easily, Wen Kexing’s fingers encountering barely more resistance than a wet cunt as he pushed them inside, stretching Zhou Zishu open, making him ready. Then he slicked himself up too, rushing now, breathless and urgent, until finally — finally — he pushed himself inside in one long, slow slide. 

"Fuck," Wen Kexing breathed into his hair as he came to rest flush against Zhou Zishu’s back again, caressing Zhou Zishu's thighs and the dip of his waist with one big hand. "A-xu, you feel so good I can’t stand it,” 

“Move,” Zhou Zishu rasped. “Fucking… Move, before I go insane.”

"Oh," said Wen Kexing, with a hint of something like wonder. And then he did as he’d been commanded, pulling back far enough that Zhou Zishu whined at the loss of him, then plunged back in hard and deep enough to punch the whine right out of his lungs. 

Zhou Zishu grabbed the sheets with both fists and arched his back, pushing back into the force of it. “Yes,” he hissed, sibilant and half mad. “More. Fuck me. Fuck me harder.” 

“Yeah? Yeah, okay.” Wen Kexing gripped him by his sweat-slick hips and dragged him up to his knees, then did his best to oblige, fucking him hard and deep, vocally relishing the tight heat of his body. For a while the world shrank to nothing but the slap of their bodies, the hot wet gasps of their breath; their shuddering moans punctuating every thrust. 

Feeling feverish, Zhou Zishu twisted, looking back, straining to reach for Wen Kexing, drawing him down into a kiss that was more teeth than lips. The arch of his back shifted his hips, causing Wen Kexing’s cock to drag inside him at a new angle that made Zhou Zishu see stars. He cried out, wordless and wild, and Wen Kexing laughed dark and wicked against his open mouth. He rocked back on his heels, pulling himself up to sit and dragging Zhou Zishu into his lap, impaling him again on his cock, then began moving him up and down like a rag doll. Zhou Zishu’s head lolled back against his shoulder, and he reached a shaking hand around to grip his drooling erection, the other coming to squeeze softly at his balls, otherwise completely limp under the onslaught of Wen Kexing’s thrusts. 

It didn’t take long after that. With a groan and a gasping breath Zhou Zishu’s body clenched and seized around Wen Kexing's cock, and then he was flying, only vaguely aware of the hot pulses of his own come spilling over his fingers onto the bed. Wen Kexing growled and ground up into him, feral now with need. Zhou Zishu clenched tight around him, slurring, “Do it, Lao Wen, fill me up, fuck, do it now,” and then Wen Kexing was spilling too, driving in on the next thrust and gasping as he spilled his release deep inside Zhou Zishu. 

Zhou Zishu had no idea how long they laid there, tangled together, wet and messy as they were. He could feel his pulse beating wildly in his hands, his scalp, low in his pelvis behind the spot where his cock joined his hips. Wen Kexing’s heartbeat was similarly frantic, Zhou Zishu could feel it pounding against his back even through both of their ribcages. 

In his sex drunk mind Zhou Zishu considered that was a nice detail to have in the network, that pounding heart. It really added something to the post-orgasmic experience. 

Slowly, eventually they came back to themselves, separating and collapsing side by side with soft noises of reluctance and distaste for the (cold, clammy) ruined sheets. Wen Kexing turned to place a soft kiss against Zhou Zishu’s sweaty temple.

"Get up here," Zhou Zishu commanded when the centimeters of distance between them felt too great. Wen Kexing came obediently, moving to rest half on top of him with his ear over Zhou Zishu’s heart. Zhou Zishu leaned down to smell the mess of Wen Kexing’s hair, secreting a kiss against his scalp, then groaned as Wen Kexing took his hand, sticky with his own come, and licked it clean, laughing at the disgusted noise that it elicited from Zhou Zishu. 

“God, we’re so gross,” Zhou Zishu complained, looking down at their bodies. “We should… we need to clean up.” 

"In a minute," Wen Kexing agreed, and closed his eyes, committed to savoring the afterglow. “I’ll deal with it. I can, you know…” he made a vague, vanishing gesture with one hand “... in the code. I just. Need a minute.” 

Zhou Zishu grunted in the affirmative, pleased that Wen Kexing managed to learn something so practical and useful during his quest to manipulate the fabric of reality inside the Jianghu Network. Soon his own tired eyes floated shut, and he allowed sleep to wash over him. He was supposed to be resting, after all — doctor’s orders.